“Thanks for the information, Mrs. Holman.”  It was Mrs. Andersen’s servant, who had at last recovered her voice.  “But I think you won’t need to trouble yourself any more about our washing.  It’s much too plain and humble for such grand sentiments.”

She dropped a curtsey, and then added, as she vanished quickly out of the gate: 

“If only your soap-lye was half as sharp as your tongue!”

It was always Mrs. Holman’s strong point, and one on which she prided herself, that she was always hungering and thirsting after righteousness in this world—­in others.  Inasmuch as part of this sentence also points inwards towards one’s self, she was fortunate in finding her own doorstep well swept.  She was also in the favourable position of being able to lay down both the law and the exceptions.

To every one comes a time when he is surrounded by a lustre, and that blockmaker Holman had existed was something which was really properly understood—­perhaps by his wife too—­only after he had disappeared from the scene.

The fact is, that it makes a great difference to a household whether it has the husband’s work and weekly wages to subsist upon or not, and as a further aggravation of the situation, her dead husband’s bill at Mrs. Selvig’s thrust its extremely unexpected, unwelcome face into Mrs. Holman’s room.  Mrs. Holman could never get into her head that that bill was correct—­why, Holman had had his fixed, regular pocket-money!

Mrs. Holman’s bitter observations were numerous when she found herself compelled to choose between want and seeking work.

She had known to a pin’s point how she would employ her husband’s earnings in her own room, and occupied herself also with the way in which others might have things in theirs.  During all these years, she had, so to speak, sat comfortably on the top of the load and driven; but now, unfortunately, the day had come when she herself must get down and draw—­and that she felt herself less fitted for.

It was when brought into this critical situation that Mrs. Holman thought that if an exertion was ever to be made, it must be made now—­by whom, she left unsaid.  To this end she availed herself of her acquaintance with Consul Veyergang to get her daughter Silla taken into his factory.  Unemployed hands must have something to do, and it would, at any rate, yield some small compensation for the weekly money lost with her husband.  If she then stayed at home and kept house well, and in addition mended and took in washing when it came in her way, no one would venture to charge Mrs. Holman with not knowing how to do her duty during these hard days.

And she still discharged this duty of hers by strictly keeping Silla from passing her leisure time in idleness, which was dangerous for young people.  Sewing and darning and patching all the evening—­there could be no better way of being trained in steadiness.