"So do the circuses, Mother, and they're a good thing. People
ought to get fun for some of their money. Even father liked old
Joe."

"Your father," Mrs. Ericson said grimly, "liked everybody."

As they crossed the sand creek and turned into her own place,
Mrs. Ericson observed, "There's Olaf's buggy. He's stopped on his
way from town." Nils shook himself and prepared to greet his
brother, who was waiting on the porch.

Olaf was a big, heavy Norwegian, slow of speech and movement.
His head was large and square, like a block of wood. When Nils, at
a distance, tried to remember what his brother looked like, he
could recall only his heavy head, high forehead, large nostrils,
and pale blue eyes, set far apart. Olaf's features were
rudimentary: the thing one noticed was the face itself, wide and
flat and pale; devoid of any expression, betraying his fifty years
as little as it betrayed anything else, and powerful by reason of
its very stolidness. When Olaf shook hands with Nils he looked at
him from under his light eyebrows, but Nils felt that no one could
ever say what that pale look might mean. The one thing he had
always felt in Olaf was a heavy stubbornness, like the unyielding
stickiness of wet loam against the plow. He had always found Olaf
the most difficult of his brothers.

"How do you do, Nils? Expect to stay with us long?"

"Oh, I may stay forever," Nils answered gaily. "I like this