“Yes, miss, and he’s a-goin’ back to work to-morrow,” replied the child, lifting a beaming face up to the friendly Norwegian lady, who had become a general favorite among her neighbors.
“That is one of the little Hallifields,” explained Sigrid, as they passed on. “The father, you know, is a tram-car conductor, and the work is just killing him by inches; some day you really must have a talk with him and just hear what terrible hours he has to keep. It makes me sick to think of it. How I wish you were in Parliament, Frithiof, and could do something to put down all the grievances that we are forever coming across!”
“There was once a time when at home we used to dream that I might even be a king’s minister,” said Frithiof.
Something in his voice made her sorry for her last speech; she knew that one of his fits of depression had seized him.
“So we did, and perhaps after all you may be. It was always, you know, through something very disagreeable that in the old stories the highest wish was attained. Remember the ‘Wild Swans.’ And even ‘Cinderella’ has that thought running through it. We are taught the same thing from our nursery days upward. And, you know, though there are some drawbacks, I think living like this, right among the people, is a splendid training. One can understand their troubles so much better.”
“I should have thought you had troubles enough of your own,” he said moodily, “without bothering yourself with other people’s.”
“But since our own troubles I have somehow cared more about them; I don’t feel afraid as I used to do of sick people, and people who have lost those belonging to them. I want always to get nearer to them.”
“Sigrid,” he said desperately, “can you bear a fresh trouble for yourself? I have bad news for you to-night.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating.
“Roy?” she asked breathlessly, her mind instinctively turning first to fears for his safety.