And every time he looked at his watch, she looked at her boy:  there were now orders and a time fixed for her to leave him.

He had fallen asleep again.  If he were to wake, she did not know what would happen—­she was sure she could not leave him then.

“No hurry, no hurry!” and he took the thick silver watch out of his pocket once more.

But now it was she who was in a hurry, and so eager that she gave herself no time to look round before she was seated in the carriage, and the long, stiff-necked, braided coachman was driving her away along the road of her appointed destiny.

In the summer she accompanied the Consul-General’s family to a bathing-place.  There Barbara wheeled the perambulator with the two children in it along the shore, and more than once the Veyergangs were flattered by the exclamations of passers-by:  “What a fine-looking nurse!”

But there were difficulties with her, too—­fits of melancholy to which she completely gave way.  She would sit by the cradle, her eyes red with weeping, longing for her child, and would neither eat nor drink.

This was a matter of no little importance.  A nurse must be kept in good spirits; her frame of mind has such an immense influence on her health, and that again on the health of the child.

Mrs. Veyergang had all sorts of good things brought in from the pastry-cook’s to enliven her; silk handkerchiefs and aprons abounded, and the servants at home received injunctions to inquire after Barbara’s boy at the tinsmith’s.

There was praise and nothing but praise to be given every time the Consul-General’s Lars stopped there in driving past, and when Barbara only received a message of that kind, she could be happy and contented the whole month.

She was made much of, as she very soon felt.  If she said or wanted anything, she was obeyed as if she were the mistress herself.  And handsome clothes with constant change of fine underclothing, not to mention meat and drink—­hardly anything of what she was accustomed to call work, her hands had already become quite soft and supple.  And she felt that she was beginning to be attached to the two little ones whom she tended day and night.

* * * * *

One day, after the Consul’s family had returned from the bathing-place, Barbara set out for the tinsmith’s.  It was late in the autumn.  She could hardly ever remember the road out there so bad and muddy as it was now.  Both her boots and the bottom of her dress would need cleaning and washing when she got back again.

The thought that she would soon see her boy put her in a cold perspiration; but of course things were best as they were, now that she could pay so well for him.

When she turned in by the wooden fence and saw the cottage with its familiar cracked windows in front of her, she slackened her pace a little.  A feeling of apprehension suddenly came over her.