Page:Selma Lagerlöf - Mårbacka (1924).djvu/137

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THE LARDER ON STILTS
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husband they could not be sure of keeping her at Mårbacka. What would their mother do without her? And what would they themselves do who got such nice titbits from her whenever they went into the kitchen? And what would happen to the whole place, they wondered?

It was most imperative, therefore, that they should know how the matter stood; so they asked Nurse Maja if it were true that the housekeeper was married and had a husband.

Oh, yes. Nurse Maja knew the whole story. She had heard it from her mother, who was in service at Mårbacka at the time it all happened.

"It is the truth and no lie," said she. The housekeeper's husband was living in Karlstad, and was a boss carpenter. There was no such luck as his being dead!

And this was how it came about: When Lieutenant Lagerlöf and his brother as lads attended school at Karlstad, their mother, the old mistress, had sent her trusted housekeeper along with the boys, to look after them and prepare their meals. While there, she had made the acquaintance of a carpenter, who proposed to her. When on her return to Mårbacka in the spring she announced that she was going to be married, the old mistress was both sad and alarmed at the thought of losing her "greatest treasure."

"And what sort of fellow are you marrying?" she had asked her. "Do you know whether he is a good man?"