FullReads

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 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 he 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 andlightly, 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.

Nils shook his head reprovingly. "Come, now, you’re malicious. "

"No, I’m not. But I’d like something to happen to stir them all up, just for once. There never was such a family for having nothing ever happen to them but dinner and threshing. I’d almost be willing to die, just to have a funeral. Youwouldn’t stand it for three weeks. "

Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with the finger of one hand. "I wouldn’t? My dear young lady, how do you know what I can stand? Youwouldn’t wait to find out. "

Clara flushed darkly and frowned. "I didn’t believe you would ever come back—" she said defiantly.

"Eric believed I would, and he was only a baby when I went away. However, all’s well that ends well, and I haven’t come back to be a skeleton at the feast. We mustn’t quarrel. Mother will be here with a search warrant pretty soon. " He swung round and faced her, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. "Come, you ought to be glad to see me, if you want something to happen. I’m something, even without a will. We can have a little fun, can’t we? I think we can!"

She echoed him, "I think we can!" They both laughed and their eyes sparkled. Clara Vavrika looked ten years younger than when she had put the velvet ribbon about her throat that morning.

"You know, I’m so tickled to see mother," Nils went on. "I didn’t know I was so proud of her. A regular pile driver. How about little pigtails, down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by those children?"