He covered his face with his hands. Sigrid noticed that the veins about his temples stood out like blue cords, so much were they enlarged.
She put her arm about him, kissing his hair, his hands, his forehead.
“I do not mind poverty, little father. I mind only that you are so troubled,” she said. “And surely, surely they will not take the agency from you after all these years! Oh, poverty will be nothing, if only we can keep from disgrace—if only others need not be dragged down too!”
They were interrupted by a tap at the door, and Swanhild stole in, making the pretty little courtesy without which no well-bred Norwegian child enters or leaves a room.
“Mayn’t I come and say good-night to you, little father?” she asked. “I got on ever so well at school, just as you said, after our merry breakfast.”
The sight of the child’s unconscious happiness was more than he could endure; he closed his eyes that she might not see the scalding tears which filled them.
“How dreadfully ill father looks,” said Swanhild uneasily.
“His head is very bad,” said Sigrid. “Kiss him, dear, and then run to bed.”
“I too will go up,” he said. “Bed is the best place, eh, Swanhild? God bless you, little one; good-night. What, are you going to be my walking-stick?”
And thus, steadying himself by the child, he went up to his room.
At breakfast the next morning he was in his place as usual, but he seemed very poorly, and afterward made no suggestion as to going down to the office, but lay on the sofa in his study, drowsily watching the flames in his favorite English fireplace. Sigrid went about the house busy with her usual duties, and for the time so much absorbed that she almost forgot the great trouble hanging over them. About eleven o’clock there was a ring at the door-bell; the servant brought in a telegram for Herr Falck. A sort of wild hope seized her that it might be from Frithiof. If anything could cheer her father on that day it would be to hear that all was happily settled, and, taking it from the maid, she bore it herself into her father’s room. He rose from the sofa as she entered.
“I am better, Sigrid,” he said. “I think I could go to the office. Ah! a telegram for me?”
“It has come this minute,” she said, watching him as he sat down before his desk, adjusted his spectacles, and tore open the envelope. If only Frithiof could send news that would cheer him! If only some little ray of brightness would come to lighten that dark day! She had so persuaded herself that the message must be from Frithiof that the thought of the business anxieties had become for the time quite subservient. The telegram was a long one.