obably she had never asked them to remain with her. "Think you,
Roedlinna, that I would ask them to stay here with me, when they can go
out in the world and have things comfortable?" she would say as she
stood in the stall with the old cow. "Here in Smaland they have only
poverty to look forward to."

But when the last grandchild was gone, it was all up with the mistress.
All at once she became bent and gray, and tottered as she walked; as if
she no longer had the strength to move about. She stopped working. She
did not care to look after the farm, but let everything go to rack and
ruin. She didn't repair the houses; and she sold both the cows and the
oxen. The only one that she kept was the old cow who now talked with
Thumbietot. Her she let live because all the children had tended her.

She could have taken maids and farm-hands into her service, who would
have helped her with the work, but she couldn't bear to see strangers
around her, since her own had deserted her. Perhaps she was better
satisfied to let the farm go to ruin, since none of her children were
coming back to take it after she was gone. She did not mind that she
herself became poor, because she didn't value that which was only hers.
But she was troubled lest the children should find out how hard she had
it. "If only the children do not hear of this! If only the children do
not hear of this!" she sighed as she tottered through the cowhouse.

The children wrote constantly, and begged her to come out to them; but
this she did not wish. She didn't want to see the land that had taken
them from her. She was angry with it. "It's foolish of me, perhaps, that
I do not like that land which has been so good for them," said she. "But
I don't want to see it."

She never thought of anything but the children, and of this--that they
must needs have gone. When summer came, she led the cow out to graze in
the big swamp. All day she would sit on the edge of the swamp, her hands
in her lap; and on the way home she would say: "You see, Roedlinna, if
there had been large, rich fields here, in place of these barren swamps,
then there would have been no need for them to leave."

She could become furious with the swamp which spread out so big, and did
no good. She could sit and talk about how it was the swamp's fault that
the children had left her.

This last evening she had been more trembly and feeble than ever before.
She could not even do the milking. She had leaned aga