“And what will happen to me at home afterwards?  And you’re not dressed for it either, this evening.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid, Mr. Nikolai.  I may as well see with my own eyes how highly my daughter condescends to respect her mother who is left a poor defenceless widow.”

It was Mrs. Holman’s own voice; she was standing in the gateway, looking preternaturally large.

“I thought I had gone through the worst that could be, when Holman died, and that I should be spared the pain of catching my own flesh and blood out, without leave, in conversation in the street, in the middle of the snow.  Neither should I have thought that that person would ever presume to come so near my house.  Just you come in with me, Silla.  Come in, do you hear—­at once!”

If any one could have gathered up the component parts of Mrs. Holman’s last screaming treble, he would have found a wealth of emotions:  injured motherly dignity, wrath, contempt, hatred, and something heavy, which was meant to have a crushing effect, and really did almost make Silla fall on her knees; she stood there without moving.

Nikolai had become a little hardened, however, since the old days; he knew now that there were others of whom he was more afraid than he was of Mrs. Holman.  He was not affected by her.

“I must ask to be allowed to come in, however, ma’am, for I didn’t come here this evening to stand out in the snow.  It is to you yourself I want to speak.”

“Perhaps it’s no longer than can be said here where we stand,” answered Mrs. Holman, rudely.  “Come here, Silla!”

“Oh no, it’s not very long; but then I must explain one or two things that belong to it.”

As Mrs. Holman still continued to bar the gateway and only beckoned again to her daughter, Silla, in her despair and terror, suddenly made her choice.  There was nothing for it but to shut her eyes and stand by Nikolai, and she took his arm boldly.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s it, as you see.  We hold together as we have done ever since we were little.  And I came this evening to ask for her, and to ask if we could have the benefit of your leave and consent.  For with my credentials and good wages, and when I never drink and—­”

Silla now acted with the courage of despair; she pushed Nikolai so that they all three—­Mrs. Holman yielding half involuntarily—­came through the gate and from thence into the room where the battle was then fought.

While Silla sat with her hands before her face on a chair in the dark and Nikolai, with quiet persistency continued to plead his case, and make as manifest as possible how he now had a prospect of becoming foreman and could provide for Silla, Mrs. Holman assumed a mightily offended, repellant attitude.  She employed her whole power; she bridled, and she was wrathful, and she exhibited the most extreme astonishment.  It almost looked as if he thought he could really take her daughter from her, whether she said yes or no.  What was there left for an elderly woman to live on, when her husband was dead, and her daughter who could keep her, refused, because she thought of marrying a smith who could not so much as show that he had a wedded father?