Barely a week later she was in her house, and had in the window an exhibition of balls of cotton, bread, twists, sweets, stay-laces, needle-cases, snuff, clay pipes, steel pens, matches, etc., etc., while she herself sat behind the counter—­which was a packing-case disguised under some print—­and ground coffee, which she roasted in the kitchen beyond.  In a drawer that would lock, which Nikolai had overlooked, stood the cigar-box that did duty as a cash-box, with a few coppers in it.

The acquaintance between Mrs. Holman and Barbara, too, was already renewed, with the secret about Silla preserved on Barbara’s side.

Mrs. Holman—­she lived only in the street below—­had come up, while Barbara was standing on her steps in the evening, to look at her new surroundings by the light of the just completed shop-window.  And then she must not pass an old acquaintance’s door.  She must come in and have a cup of coffee—­it was standing clearing on the hob, if she would condescend.

Mrs. Holman might very well have had her own opinion about a good deal that she saw in there, but she preferred, while she drank her coffee, to give Barbara some idea of the series of dispensations which she had passed through since Holman died.

“Oh no, don’t turn your cup up yet! One more, Mrs. Holman.”

Mrs. Holman drank a third cup too, without becoming at all less melancholy.  Her quiet, cold grey eyes had looked and explored while she talked, and sucked in observations of Barbara’s open-handed, profuse management, like pipe-clayed fat.  But when she left, she had, with many cautious reservations, and in the hope that Barbara’s wares would stand the test in the long run, expressed her inclination to remove her custom to Barbara.

Mrs. Holman’s Silla was just standing at the counter—­she wanted a pint of groats to take home with her—­when Barbara, who was measuring them out, suddenly saw Ludvig Veyergang at the door.

He had seen Barbara before, and as he passed the door twice a day now, he nodded to her whenever she showed herself on the steps.  But so friendly as he was to-day!  Barbara was quite softened, and very nearly called him Ludvig, he was so lively and playful about her shop.  He stood looking with half-closed eyes, and laughing at Silla, who grew redder and more bashful, and only tried in her confusion to get the bag of groats out of Barbara’s hand.  He had taken his straw hat off his curly hair for the heat, and looked so nice and handsome.

Silla hardly dared look up at him, and only heard something about freckles not being anything to mind when one had such dark eyes, when, with head in advance, she rushed out of the door.

Barbara’s opinion afterwards about Silla’s behaviour—­her having all at once turned crimson, and rushed away at a few innocent words from such a well-meaning and handsome man as Ludvig Veyergang—­her son heard the same evening.  A young girl ought to stand modestly, and not go on like that:  if she did, it was a sure way of getting all that could be called man-folk at her heels.