One of Life's Slaves

by Jonas Lie

"I can remember a little of the old times too, and I don't know if they were any better, though every one is welcome to have his opinion, of course," here the long, yellow face with the eyes blinking with their own meaning, was laid almost across the cup; "but the day has grown longer for workmen now. Just think how they sat in the dark in the farms and cottages with pine-torches in the fireplace to cut and spin by; and there lay the lads the whole long winter through, and idled and yawned in their beds from three or four in the afternoon until they had to go out with a lantern and see to the horses for the night. But paraffine has got them out of their beds. It's as if we had the sun the whole winter now, and people can see to earn a few pence."

"Yes, but everything hasn't got right in that way either, when they sit and play cards and gamble and drink at the public-houses."

"That's not oil, that's gas! But that's good for something, too, both in the street lamps and up in the factory."

"And for drunkenness and dancing and wickedness."

Mother Bækken made a bend down to her cup with the side of her cheek and her chin, and up again in order to contradict in her most ingenious manner. But just then Anne Graves came in to the counter—it was she who kept the churchyard in order—and then one must be careful what one says.

Thank you kindly! She had no objection to a warm cup of coffee in this cold. She had had a busy day to-day with the big funeral; they must have heard all the ringing at dinner-time. He was an excellent man. She enlarged, by the plundering of diverse fragments of the funeral sermon, upon his worth and importance as a man and a citizen of the town. There had been speeches and such countless black hats and flowers, that the coffin was quite hidden. Yes, that was the third they had taken in since the New Year, she uttered with a sigh.

"You never know what sort of people you have among you, until they are dead," remarked Mother Bækken. "If he had been the poor man's friend, they could have sung and trumpeted a little about it while he lived. Perhaps that's turned the wrong way, but—" she slowly, and with increasing expression, bent her face over her cup.

Mother Bækken must always have her own interpretations, so Mother Taraldsen discreetly warded off a disturbance of the peace by striking into the very middle of the manufacturing part of the town. She had come up the streets yesterday evening with a covered cup containing leeches, and you might really think that if, all that long way up from the chemist's, you had escaped rogues and robbers, you ought to go free up here. But there came those great, grown-up girls, flying one after another along a slide down the street, screaming and shouting, so that it was enough to knock people down. So she had dropped the cup with all five leeches in it, and if it had not been moonlight so that she could see to pick them up again on the snow, she would have lost every single one. It was that Josefa and Gunda and Kalla down the street, and that long Silla—she came along like a ghost. Ah, Mrs. Holman, who is so particular, should see what sort of a daughter she has, when it gets dark.

Barbara nodded to herself, and thought that Nikolai should just hear what people said.

"I must really go out and look at them one evening, yes indeed. Well, that about the leeches I disapprove of entirely and altogether, I must confess. But young blood must have movement in some way, and may I ask,"—here Mother Bækken laid one fore-finger upon the other—"have they any way of amusing themselves, if they must not dance, and not slide, and not toboggan?"