living image of her housekeeper. The nearer the figure approached the more certain was Grandmother Lagerlöf of what she beheld. When Maja Persdotter presently stood before her and said, "Good-evening, Frua," she had to believe her eyes and ears.
"Well, well, is it you, Maja Persdotter!" she exclaimed. "But what brings you here? Haven't you got a good husband?"
"All he does is drink," declared the housekeeper. "He's been drunk every day since the wedding. It's the pure alcohol he should be using in his work he guzzles. I can't put up any longer with such a swine."
"But I thought you were to go to the market and buy all your provisions, in order to escape hard work?"
"I'll work my fingers to the bone for Frua and the children if you'll only take me back!" vowed the housekeeper. "I've wished myself back at Mårbacka day and night since I went away."
"Come in, then, and we'll talk this over with the Paymaster of the Regiment," the old mistress said with tears of joy in her eyes. "God willing, we'll never part again so long as we live," she added.
Nor did they. The housekeeper's husband probably knew it would be useless for him to try to get her back. At all events, he never came to fetch her. The wedding ring she removed from her finger and laid away in her trunk. Nothing more was said about that episode in her life.
Lieutenant Lagerlöf's little daughters should have felt
