She went about there with a suppressed longing and eager interest, her eyes sparkling, in the midst of all the chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals—­Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina.  If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened.  In this way she could live their life at second hand.

It was of course Kristofa who knew how to put everything in a captivating, magic light.  A little walk, a possible engagement, an evening at a dance, everything was moulded by her busy imaginative power into events that never wanted a hero, that interesting, mystic being, who was seen, now with a cigar, now without one, who sometimes pretended he did not know them, sometimes nodded, or only smiled.  The person in question might be some town gentleman or other, or some one from one of the offices up there, who often had not the faintest suspicion that his coming and going was seen in Bengal illumination, or that it caused such a flutter in their hearts; though this did not preclude others from both suspecting and taking advantage of it.

These, through Kristofa’s habit of spinning, grew into little romances, which Silla took in with wide-open eyes, and afterwards continued at home.

Silla herself had a little romance which she kept to herself:  she would not dare to tell it to Nikolai.

She had to take care, when she went at dinner-time to buy anything for her mother at Barbara’s, that Veyergang had not gone in there on his way down to light his cigar.

The last time she had met him there, he laughed and asked whether the black-eyed maid wanted to run away from him?  He was not so very terrible!  She had completely vanished lately.  He had heard that her mother kept her in a cage for the sake of a dangerous smith—­was that true?  When a young girl had two such black eyes, she ought not to hide them away.

And yet it was not altogether a warlike condition; but he knew very well that she watched and waited, however long it might be, until he had left the shop.

All this was like a ray of sunlight through the high, barred paling.

In other respects, one day passed like another, from the hum of the factory into the work at home, and Mrs. Holman was quite satisfied with the help she really must say she had of Silla this summer.  That her daughter grew more large-eyed, pale and thin, it was not in her nature to attach much importance to; it only showed that Silla was not accustomed to systematic work.

On the rare occasions when Nikolai had an opportunity of speaking to her, Silla complained sadly.

She talked herself into such exasperation that she cried over everything that the others—­all the others—­had leave to do, and only she had not.  To begin with, in her childhood, and all the time she was growing up, she had been bottled up in that cellar in the square, and now, when she was grown up, she had got into a regular workhouse!