"Would he like her to give up like a cow to be slaughtered before Christmas," she exclaimed angrily—"and no more money than that was!"
"I only meant it would be better to stop in time."
But these words had the effect of fire on gunpowder. She got up, as red as a tile. Just so! Now he wanted her to close!
She rushed—in a manner somewhat recalling the useful animal just mentioned by herself, when it is trying to get loose—into the shop and back again.
If Nikolai thought that she would give up and go bankrupt to be jeered at by everybody, when she only needed to go down and borrow that little of Ludvig, he was very much mistaken.
Barbara was quite flushed.
She would not let herself be ruined a second time for Nikolai's sake. It was quite enough that he had injured her welfare once before in this world. Yes, he need not sit and look at her with open mouth. What else was she turned out of the Veyergangs' house for, where she had been so important, if it was not because Nikolai had lifted his hand against the Consul-General's Ludvig. Oh yes, he might wonder as much as he liked, but that was why she had been driven out helpless into the world, from comfortable circumstances. And then when an opportunity came for Nikolai to support her a little, he had some one else to spend his money upon.
But the most vexatious part of it was that Nikolai also wanted to forbid her to apply to one who was as good as her own child, when there was the necessity for it.
She would pay no attention to that however. If he would not help her, he must put up with her going to one who could, now that it was a question of closing the shop and the whole business.
No, she swore she would not go bankrupt. And she struck the table so that the coppers danced in the drawer.