“Uf! you ARE a crazy thing. Ha-ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha!”
They both snuggled down under the clothes, with the sense of ease and peace that comes from sharing a room with a good friend in a happy humour.
“Well, good-night, Louise.”
“Good-night, Peer.”
Chapter VI
So things went on till winter was far spent. Now that Louise, too, was a wage-earner, and could help with the expenses, they could dine luxuriously at an eating-house every day, if they pleased, on meat-cakes at fourpence a portion. They managed to get a bed for Peer that could be folded up during the day, and soon learned, too, that good manners required they should hang up Louise’s big woollen shawl between them as a modest screen while they were dressing and undressing. And Louise began to drop her country speech and talk city-fashion like her brother.
One thought often came to Peer as he lay awake. “The girl is the very image of mother, that’s certain—what if she were to go the same way? Well, no, that she shall not. You’re surely man enough to see to that. Nothing of that sort shall happen, my dear Froken Hagen.”
They saw but little of each other during the day, though, for they were apart from early in the morning till he came home in the evening. And when he lectured her, and warned her to be careful and take no notice of men who tried to speak to her, Louise only laughed. When Klaus Brock came up one day to visit them, and made great play with his eyes while he talked to her, Peer felt much inclined to take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him downstairs.