“Hedvig Egholm. And what’s yours? You’re the carpenter’s son, I suppose?”
“No, I’m only working here, that’s all. My room’s just at that end—like to come and see it?”
“No, thanks. I must make haste in.”
“Well, then, come this evening, or to-morrow. Will you?” he asked eagerly, routing about in all the corners for more wood.
But Hedvig only laughed, and shook her heavy yellow plaits. She came back to her mother with a load that reached to her chin. There was no need to use the bones, after all—they burnt well enough, it is true, but stank abominably in the burning.
Emanuel was given a row of the neat wooden blocks, set up on the table before him.
“Look—there’s the puff-puff,” said Hedvig.
The child laughed all over his face, but a moment later he was nibbling at the engine.
In the next room Egholm was still talking about the manifold vicissitudes of his life.
He had started as a grocer’s assistant in Helsingør, then in Aalborg; after that he had been a photographer, in the time of the war, when the Austrians were there. He had made a fortune, but it had vanished in an attempt to double it, in Göteborg, Sweden, where there was no photographer at that time at all. Then on to Copenhagen with but a few small coins remaining, and, despite this adverse beginning, the possession of the biggest photographic studio in the town a few months later.