“Oh, I don’t usually carry much with me,” answered the mechanic indifferently. “But at any rate, I am full; and now I am doing like the aristocrats—eating dessert after the meal.”
With this he tossed a handful of raisins and nuts carelessly across the table. A young fellow who had lately joined “the gang,” was gallant enough to pass a few to Loppen, who sat apart on the chest by the door.
The sweet taste excited her, hungry as she was. She leaned forward to see if there were not more. But the others had taken them; there were, in fact, only two or three apiece; just enough so each would get the taste in his mouth.
The tinker muttered something about not everybody being versed in mechanics.
“There’s no need of it, either,” answered the other, while he deftly landed a bunch of raisins in Elsie’s lap. “Where I came from, you could go in and out with a coffee-sack on your back.”
All eyes turned now to the mechanic; and all were afire to know where that was. But they knew, too, that he was a dangerous man to be with and walked in dangerous paths, so no one dared be the first to open fire.
“Where was that?” was asked at once.
It was Loppen. She did not mean anything by it; it was only curiosity; the raisins were so sweet and it was so long since such things had been tendered to her.
The man of the many faces who had hitherto let his eyes run from one to the other, now addressed himself more to Elsie, while he now and then tossed a few raisins or nuts over to her, or across the table. They were seized in a trice by anxious hands; all had conceived a desire for more of the sweets which irritated without sating.
“Do you want to know where it is?” said the mechanic gaily. “Well, that don’t cost anything, my child. It is down in the corner just in front of Consul With’s house at Ellingsen and Larsen’s. The whole store is jammed full of people who buy like mad. That they do not eat themselves to death—the rich, on such a night, I can’t understand. There is sugar and syrup and butter and rice—such a world of rice—and fine Danish butter and cheese—golden, fat cheese which glistens when you cut into it.”