“Now it’s time for the bath,” said the mother, taking up her boy, and while he splashed and screamed in the water, the old man stood as he always did, and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. But all the time he had a dim vision of Wangen’s brickfields, and remembered how last autumn Wangen had instituted an eight-hours working-day. It was just like the fool! It would be a nice thing to be a farmer if such mad ideas spread and made labour conditions even worse than they were! Was it to be wondered at if such men went bankrupt? But it wasn’t his fault if Wangen said more than he meant on that subject when it was a question of inducing people to stand surety for him. And the old man began to pace the floor.
“Won’t grandfather say good-night to us?” said his daughter-in-law, as the old man went to the door as if about to rush out in a rage. Norby woke up. The boy was ready for bed, and was stretching out his arms towards him.
The family had supper in the little room between the kitchen and the large rooms. Since the new house had been built, they had been literally homeless, for none of them were at ease in the large, sparely-furnished rooms, and they were too much cramped for space in the little room. The hanging lamp with its glass pendants shed its light upon the tea-things and the white cloth, and a large copper kettle shone upon the old sideboard. Five people sat down to supper. There were the two daughters, Ingeborg and Laura, who sat one on each side of their father; opposite him sat his wife, with a silver chain about her neck, and a reserved expression on her face, and her daughter-in-law by her side. They still had one son living, but he was in Christiania studying philology.
“I must get you to put out my forest clothes this evening,” said Norby to Ingeborg; “I must go and see to the timber-felling in the morning.”
Ingeborg was the good angel of the house. Her fiancé, a young doctor, had been found dead in his bed three days before their wedding, and since then she had never been the same. Although she was not much more than five-and-twenty, her hair was sprinkled with grey, her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes had a timid, far-away look in them. She was worrying already as to what would become of her when her parents died; and in order to run no risk of being left with a bad conscience, she was constantly occupied in attending to their wants, was the first up in the morning, was always busy in the kitchen and larder, shed tears of despair when she had forgotten anything, and in spite of all this thought herself quite useless in the house.
“Do you eat as inelegantly when you are in town as you do here?” said the mother to Laura, looking sternly at her.
Laura looked a little embarrassed, and tried to throw an obstinate lock of hair off her rosy face; but she was not long in regaining her cheerfulness.
She went to school in town, and now began to talk about her old teacher and her mincing ways, her snuff-box and her inky fingers. “Dear children,” she mimicked, making an exceedingly funny face, and pretending to take a pinch of snuff; “do sit still and don’t give me so much trouble!” Her sister-in-law laughed, showing as she did so the absence of a front tooth; her mother could not help smiling, and even the old man glanced merrily at the lively girl.
“I will write to him to-morrow,” he said to himself as he emptied his cup. “I am sure it was not more than two thousand, and if there is more——”