Poverty in every corner. The very pattern of the wallpaper was formed of holes and patches of damp.
True, there were the two arm-chairs and the chest of drawers, but....
His wife was still talking away of all the good things they had to be thankful for. Of Hedvig, coming home regularly with her good wages, and the chance now of getting a place at ten kroner, at Wassermann’s. And then Sivert, still at the glazier’s this ever so long. Surely it was a mercy they could be proud of their children?
And soon Egholm himself would have finished that steamboat thing of his.... Fru Egholm threw out this last by some chance, having exhausted all other items that could reasonably be included.
Her husband started. It was what he had been thinking of all the evening himself. But, anxious not to betray the fact, he said only:
“Yes; if I’m lucky.”
But Anna saw through him all the same. Stupid of her not to have thought before of the one thing that was all the world to him.
“And why shouldn’t you be lucky, I should like to know? You haven’t lost faith in your own invention?”
“It’s a curious thing,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “One moment I believe in it, and the next I don’t. How is it possible that the trained experts with all modern equipment at their backs—and money, most of all—with nothing to worry about but their own calculations and plans—how could they have missed the solution of the problem when it seems to me as plain as the nose on your face?”
“Why, as to that, I don’t know, I’m sure. But that steam cart you made, you know, just before Hedvig was born, that didn’t work.”