It was something of this kind that Mrs. Selvig and her daughters were busy looking out and putting together, out of some green bed-hangings.  One’s good name is dear to every one, and Mrs. Selvig felt that what had just taken place was a blow to the house.

It was now nearly dark in the tap-room.  Holman’s dark figure had been moved on to the stretcher, which stood on the floor ready to be lifted, and a message had been sent to Mrs. Holman.

Perhaps they delayed purposely; a little later in the evening when it was darker, and an undesirable sensation in the street would be avoided.

Silla’s face was stiff with crying.  There was no one in the room but her and Nikolai.

He stood by the counter, and she was sitting with her back to the window; there was no sound but the humming of a gnat in the half-darkness up under the curtain.

At last he broke the silence.

“He was kind, both to you and to me, as often as he dared be, you know.”

Silla did not answer.

“He always dreaded going home at night so, you know.  He’ll be spared that now, and setting his foot inside this public-house again, too!”

“Father!  Father!” broke from Silla, followed by a fit of violent sobbing.

“Listen, Silla!” he said, interrupted by the repressed weight on his own breast.  “If you have no father, you have some one here who will take care of you, and knows what it is—­I have never had any father either, nor ever seen any.  And I will be a smith, as there won’t be any more block-making for you now.  I only wanted to tell you, so that you can remember it afterwards,” he added softly—­it did not look as if Silla were listening to him.

“And this evening I’ll follow you right to the corner, and I’ll stand there until everything is in, and I shall be outside to-night; so you know it, if anything is wanted.”

“Yes, stay outside, Nikolai!” she whispered.

The public-house bear and the two bearers came in.  They lifted the stretcher out through the door, and, with a little difficulty at the turn, down the steps, where a few spectators stood.

And so they went up the street—­the dead with the two bearers and the public-house bear in front, and Silla and Nikolai behind.

At the place where they were to part, he pressed the basket, which she had forgotten, into her hand, and then stood looking after them.

CHAPTER VI

THE FACTORY GIRLS

What becomes of all the swarm of orphan children down in the by-streets and outskirt alleys of the capital—­children of whom no one has any account, and no one takes any account, who swarm down there only one floor higher, so to speak, than the spawn and small fry which are floating below in the sea among the quay piles, and which will one day become large male and female fish?

Disease wields a broad broom in the earliest age.  The harbour takes them into its embrace; the streets with their stray livelihoods, or a wandering vagabond life, takes them; refuges, police-stations, prisons and the house of correction take them.  In later years, labour also, on a great scale, has taken them into its embrace—­the factory doors stand wide open.