Aloud he only said cautiously:  “If we are only wise, and careful, and look well ahead, perhaps we may be sitting in our own room by next spring, Silla.  But so many things may happen in between,” he added huskily, with a deep-drawn sigh.

“I really believe there’ll be neither life nor courage in you until you’re married, Nikolai,” she said, laughing; “you’re so horrid to meet now, that it’s enough to make one quite sad and uncomfortable the whole evening.  A nice sweetheart you are!” She swung roguishly round on her heel, with the can extended, and ran down the road, nodding a farewell.

He had not got so far as to tell her what he had originally gone up there for—­the news about his mother, and, to tell the truth, he had completely forgotten it; but it would be time enough next time he met her.  And it must not be too long to that, things looking as they did now.

* * * * *

A few weeks afterwards some one inquired for him.

A peasant carter, in a state of great uncertainty about his load, had stopped outside the eating-house.  Part of the load was made up of his mother’s big chest, which the man had undertaken to drive to town, and leave for the meantime at Nikolai’s.  Barbara herself was to follow in a day or two.

She must have some project in her head!  Perhaps she was thinking of going out to service again.

And one evening when he came home he found a red wooden box and a pair of laced boots upon the chest.  His mother must have been there!

Half an hour later she appeared.  She had only been out to buy a little new rye-bread, cheese, and butter to take up to her lodgings this evening.

In the meantime she cut some for herself and offered some to him.

Her ample figure, in addition to her effects, almost filled Nikolai’s narrow little bedroom.  She had become rather short of breath, and acquired a double-chin with so much sitting indoors; the lower part of her face, which, in the brilliancy of youth, had been covered with pure, healthy mountain roses, now, as it moved in the process of eating, gave only the impression of powerful crushing with still solid teeth, in which, however, toothache, from many scalding cups of coffee, had made here and there serious inroads.  While she sat on the chest and he on the bed, she gave expression to the following: 

The farmer with whom she had bargained to live—­for eighteen dollars a year and help at the busy seasons, while she found herself in coffee—­was so pinching and mean about the board, that she had been obliged to buy one thing and another herself; well, he had seen the ham himself, and knew what she had been accustomed to at the Veyergangs’.  She could truly say that she had swallowed her food with tears many a time, when she thought of all that she had done for Ludvig and Lizzie, that she had carried them in her arms and been more to them than their own mother.  And then to think that the reward of all this should be hard work in the hay and corn harvest!  No, she was praised by too many mouths for that!