I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls.
She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his hat in his hand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room he leaned against the wire screen. “Aren't you at all surprised to see me, Clara Vavrika?”
“No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned Olaf last night that you were here.”
Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. “Telephoned? That must have been while Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she enterprising? Lift this screen, won't you?”
Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the window-sill. As he stepped into the room she said: “You didn't think you were going to get ahead of your mother, did you?”
He threw his hat on the piano. “Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'm ahead of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, as we were leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sank up to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and escaped.” Nils chuckled. Clara's dull eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly.
“You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mother said to Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as if he'd seen a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour--ten o'clock, I should think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image. It had been one of his talkative days, too.” They both laughed, easily and lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; but they remained standing.
“Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, over in the threshing field. What's the matter with them all?”
Clara gave him a quick, searching look. “Well, for one thing, they've always been afraid you have the other will.”
Nils looked interested. “The other will?”
“Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but they never knew what he did with it. They almost tore the old house to pieces looking for it. They always suspected that he carried on a clandestine correspondence with you, for the one thing he would do was to get his own mail himself. So they thought he might have sent the new will to you for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everything to your mother, was made long before you went away, and it's understood among them that it cuts you out--that she will leave all the property to the others. Your father made the second will to prevent that. I've been hoping you had it. It would be such fun to spring it on them.” Clara laughed mirthfully, a thing she did not often do now.