after all, and I can tell you it was hard when I made the discovery.
Kongstrup wanted to send me away when I told him about it; but that
I would not have. I meant to stay and have my child born here on the
farm to which it belonged. He didn't care a bit about me any longer,
the mistress looked at me with her evil eyes every day, and there
was no one that was kind to me. I wasn't so hard then as I am now,
and it was all I could do to keep from crying always. I became hard
then. When anything was the matter, I clenched my teeth so that no
one should deride me. I was working in the field the very day it
happened, too. The boy was born in the middle of a beet-field, and
I carried him back to the farm myself in my apron. He was deformed
even then: the mistress's evil eyes had done it. I said to myself
that she should always have the changeling in her sight, and refused
to go away. The farmer couldn't quite bring himself to turn me out
by force, and so he put me into the house down by the shore."

"Then perhaps you work on the farm here in the busy seasons?"
asked Lasse.

She sniffed contemptuously. "Work! So you think I need do that?
Kongstrup has to pay me for bringing up his son, and then there
are friends that come to me, now one and now another, and bring
a little with them--when they haven't spent it all in drink. You
may come down and see me this evening. I'll be good to you too."

"No, thank you!" said Lasse, gravely. "I am a human being too,
but I won't go to one who's sat on my knee as if she'd been my
own child."

"Have you any gin, then?" she asked, giving him a sharp nudge.