Egholm remembered that according to an unwritten law it was permissible to pass by the boxes for Brethren in distress and for the library. How would it have been with the sixth in the row, hung up for Egholm in the throes of poverty?
“Did any of them give anything?” he asked humbly.
“Oh, it brought in quite a lot,” said Karlsen comfortingly. “Quite a decent little sum. You see”—he leaned forward confidentially and plucked at Egholm’s coat collar, almost stupefying him with his tobacco-laden breath—“I got the old man to stand beside it!”
He gave Egholm a friendly shake, and laughed in a spluttering shower.
“But there’s one condition. I may as well tell you that first as last. The condition of your receiving this gift is, that your wife becomes a member of the Brotherhood. Both of you, you understand—or no gift! For it’s her fault we’ve had all this bother about you. Yes, I’ve found that out. She’s from Aalborg. I know those obstinate Jutland folk!”
“My wife!” cried Egholm. New difficulties towered before him at the idea, but, at the same time, the value of the gift seemed to increase. He sprang to his feet, and ran to the kitchen door.
“Well, there you are. Now you can talk it over with her,” said Karlsen, with a laugh, leaning his head back and showing the scar of his “glands” and his ill-shaven throat. “But, look here, tell her at the same time I’m staying till the eight o’clock train, so you’ll have to find me a bite of something to eat. You know what it says about us Evangelists: we’re to have neither scrip nor staff, but take that which is set before us.”
Fru Egholm was busy plaiting hair at the kitchen table. Her husband could see from the way she tugged at her work that she had followed the conversation in the next room.
“Never as long as I live,” she said firmly.
A catastrophe seemed imminent, but Egholm was so destitute of physical or moral force at the moment that he contented himself with a threatening gesture.