Hamar. If I had known that I would certainly have attended it!
Valborg. Yes, I daresay there was plenty to make fun of, and plenty of idle loafers, too, who were not ashamed to do so.
Mrs. Tjaelde. Children, children!
Hamar. May I ask if Miss Nanna sent her own idleness to the sale with her other effects?—because I have never known any one with a finer supply of it!
Valborg. She never thought she would need to work.
Tjaelde (coming forward to VALBORG). To take up the thread of what we were saying: you don't understand what a business-man's hope is from one day to the other—always a renewed hope. That fact does not make him a swindler. He may be unduly sanguine, perhaps—a poet, if you like, who lives in a world of dreams—or he may be a real genius, who sees land ahead when no one else suspects it.
Valborg. I don't think I misunderstand the real state of affairs. But perhaps you do, father. Because is not what you call hope, poetry, genius, merely speculating with what belongs to others, when a man knows that he owes more than he has got?
Tjaelde. It may be very difficult to be certain even whether he does that or not.
Valborg. Really? I should have thought his books would tell him—
Tjaelde. About his assets and his liabilities, certainly. But values are fluctuating things; and he may always have in hand some venture which, though it cannot be specified, may alter the whole situation.