Just at the corner lay a heap of rubbish, full of broken bottles and pottery.  She stood there with her basket, every now and then taking a step backwards, up the heap, to make room for passers-by.  In this way she gained the top of the heap, and could see over the hoarding into the yard.

They were still busy receiving wages in there in a crowd round a little shed which did duty as an office.

With outstretched neck, and her two shining dark eyes turned almost like a bird’s, she stood and looked eagerly in.  There was no mistake about her object.

“Well, lass! are you looking for your sweetheart?” said a voice below.

But, as she at that moment caught sight of Nikolai, and he signalled to her, she took no notice of the voice, and waved her basket vigorously.

He came out down the passage, unwashed and sooty, straight from his work.

“He’s gone now!”

“Who?”

“He had red hair, and had on blue braces and a sailmaker’s cap.  I think it was the man from Groenlien they call Ottersnake; and he accused me of standing here and looking for my sweetheart!”

“I’ll sweetheart him!  If I only get hold of him, I’ll hammer him into nails!  And then I’ll pull his red hair to oakum, so that his father will only need to put it into the pitch-kettle!”

He looked about; but as the Ottersnake, who was doomed to so cruel and terrible a fate, was nowhere to be seen, his wrath suddenly subsided, and with an upward movement of the head, he proposed: 

“Baker Ring’s, Silla?”

He had his week’s wages in his pocket, so they made a short cut through two or three muddy back yards, which had planks laid down across the worst places, up to the baker’s shop.

Oh, how they bought, and how they did eat!

There were some specially delicious expensive cakes with jam inside.  And it was the two collars, that he had thought of buying for himself next week, that they ate up!

With a great feeling of his own importance Nikolai related how he had now forged six large iron hooks with links to them; and she must not imagine that they wanted nothing but hammering—­no, they had to be hammered out and beaten and bent at the right time!  Down there they only made stakes and picks and tires; but he meant to be either a locksmith or a brazier.

This did not interest Silla very much; she wanted to hear about the picnic on Sunday, when he had gone to the woods with the journeymen.  It must have been awfully jolly!  And didn’t they dance too?

“I should just think they did.  Anders Berg is a capital fellow; he’s going to set up for himself in Svelvig soon, and get married.”

“And were the others engaged, too?”

“Pshaw!”

“Well?”

“Pooh!”

“What’s the matter with you?  Can’t you tell me?”

“Why, it’s nothing—­only nonsense!  There’s not one of them that’ll make a smith’s wife—­creatures that have larks now with one fellow and now with another?”