Could he tell her where she could buy a counter cheap!  Or rather, get it on credit; if there was anything she was hard up for now, it was ready money.  Perhaps she might as well try to take out a little more at the carpenter’s at once, only a fair-sized folding-table, two beds, and a few chairs.  She had thought that when once she had got it started and into order, Nikolai might live with her.  If she prepared all his meals for him besides, the one thing might be set off against the other, and part of his wages go towards it—­he must himself reckon up and say how much he thought.

Barbara continued more eagerly to build up in her own mind, and emphasising now and then with a smack of her hand, how everything was to be.

But as she waxed warmer and more elated over her visions of the future, Nikolai sat doubtful, and softly beating a measure with his foot.  All this about the shop might be right enough.  His mother must surely understand it, she who had been at the Veyergangs’, and had now, moreover, talked to the Consul himself.  But the more she initiated him into her plans, and in them appropriated him entirely to herself, and talked away as if there could be no obstacle in any corner of the heavens, the wider did the gulf between their wills and interests open before him.  She came with a mother’s long-dispensed-with right, and just now he knew in his heart that he belonged still more to another, and must go his own way.

She could not know that she was coming upon nails the whole time in the wall, so he would have to speak out.

“Well, you see, mother”—­he looked down at the floor—­“you’re welcome to my money, if only it’s certain I get it back again by the new year, so there’s nothing to hinder that.  But, you know, why I must have it again is—­is because I and Mrs. Holman’s Silla have agreed to marry and settle down.  And I’m quite determined about it, for I’ve worked and toiled for that, ever since Holman died; and it would be ill for me if I had to be without her.”

His sharp, grey eyes shot a glance up at her, and the mother instinctively felt that here was a will that had escaped from her hands.

This was something that had never entered into her plans.

In order to remove her dissatisfaction, he let her have his thirty dollars before she went.

There is a branch of trade in the narrow streets and outskirts, whose position is one storey higher than the stall-woman.  It sells its wares from a house, comprises, according to legislation, a great many more effects, and allows the individual concerned to lead a more comfortable existence, with a step farther from hand to mouth; that is to say, it gains, instead of a day’s credit or a weekly settlement, a week’s credit or a monthly settlement.

It was in this small trade that Barbara wanted to start, and if it can be said of America that whole towns and undertakings arise in a moment of time, something of the same kind might well be said of Barbara’s shop.