It had been a splendid afternoon. But he did not speak of it as he went home with Lisbeth; she would have been sure to have turned up her nose at it.
"Hm, the mistress is nice and angry," said Lisbeth--she never said anything but "the mistress" when speaking to the boy. "Why did you stop there such an everlasting time? Didn't you hear the mistress say you were to come home before it was dark?"
He did not answer. Let her chatter, it was not at all true. He stared past her into the twilight. But when he came into the room on reaching home, he noticed that his mother had waited for him. She was certainly not angry, but his evening meal, an egg, a ham sandwich, the milk in a silver mug, everything neatly prepared, was already there, and she sat opposite his place with her hands folded on the white table cloth, frowning impatiently.
The large hanging-lamp, which cast a bright light on the table and made her bent head gleam like gold, did not brighten up her face.
His mother was in silk, in light silk, in a dress trimmed with lace, which only had something that looked like a very transparent veil over the neck and arms. Oh, now he remembered, she was to meet his father, who had not come home to dinner that day, in town at eight o'clock, and go to a party with him. Oh, that was why he had had to come home so early. As if he could not have got into bed alone.
"You've come so late," she said.
"You could have gone," he said.
"You know, my child, that I'm uneasy if I don't know that you are at home." She sighed: "How could I have gone?"
He looked at her in surprise: why did she say that? Had somebody been telling tales about him again? Why was she so funny?
He gazed at her with wide-open eyes, as though she were a perfect stranger to him in that dress that left her neck and arms so bare. He put his food into his mouth lost in thought, and munched it slowly. All at once he had to think a great deal of what he had heard Frau Lämke tell. His father and mother had never told anything about when he was born.