It was quite a chance, and it sometimes happened that he just met Mrs. Holman instead.  He must put up with that; at any rate, he looked right into the street there, in the cluster of houses where Silla walked several times a day.  But what he found more difficult to put up with was, that on those occasions when he was fortunate, she was walking arm-in-arm with two or three other factory-girls, so that he scarcely got more than the one glimpse and short nod from her before they turned in now here, now there.

What did she want to go loitering about in the evening with those dissipated girls for?  Was that the sort of thing for Silla?  She was neither old enough nor wise enough to understand what she was getting mixed up in, and what a fine gentleman meant who nodded to her—­for the sake of her pretty eyes.  Amuse themselves?  Yes, go round in the mill, until they come out crushed and ground!

No!  She must come out of this.

And so he must work away with his file, and add one week’s earnings to another, until he had made the silver hook large enough to draw her to him.

Yes, once she was with him!—­he forgot himself in thoughts about house-rent and wedding outlay.

CHAPTER VIII

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

Some time after Nikolai had got his credentials, he was pleasantly surprised by a visitor—­he could hardly believe his own eyes—­none other than his mother, who was watching for him one Saturday afternoon, outside the basement where he dined.

She had heard that he had become a journeyman, and could not rest until she got a lift on one of the plank-loads which was going in to town, and paid him a visit.  She was so glad.  If he knew how many sighs she had heaved for his sake, and how many bitter tears she had shed—­the big, handsome, half peasant-clad woman was red in the face, and wept and dried her eyes incessantly on her folded pocket-handkerchief, while she gave expression to her emotion and joy over the way in which everything had turned out, as if by special guidance.

She had been so unfortunate for a long time; but now that she had got her son again, everything looked different for her.  Oh, how big and broad and fine he had grown—­a regular smith!  He had a frock-coat now for Sundays, hadn’t he?  And he must have a hat, too.  He must let her advise him; she knew all about it from what she had seen in the world.

It was with quite strange, at first almost mixed, feelings that Nikolai thus suddenly saw a mother fall down to him—­some day a father might come tumbling down too!

It was so many years since he had thought of her, and the picture he really had of her was buried in the bitter salt slough of tears in the depths of his recollections, which he was far from being in the mood to stir up.  There were things within him, which he avoided from an instinctive feeling of safety in the whole of his new, happy existence; but such a thing as finding his mother again must surely belong to the happiness of the new Nikolai, the journeyman smith!  Yes, of course, he was fond of her, and it was immensely affecting.