The dark inlaid sewing-table was Thea's inheritance from Ma. And the silver thimble, with the shell old and worn thin inside and out, broken and cracked at the top and on the edges, she used and saved, because her mother had used it all her time. It stood, left behind like a monument to Ma—to all the weary stitches—and pricks—of her honorably toiling, self-sacrificing—shall we call it life?
It was more at a pressure than by regularly knocking that the door to the sitting-room was opened, and Grip cautiously entered.
"You, Grip? No, no, not by the door, sit down up there by the window. Then my sister will get you a little something to eat,—oh, you can manage to eat a little bread and butter and salt meat, can't you? Well, so you are up this way, Grip?"
"Seeking a chance to teach, I may say, Mrs. Gülcke," was the evasive reply. "I am told you have heard from Jörgen over in America," he hastily added, to get away from the delicate subject.
"Yes, just think: Jörgen is a well-to-do, rich manager of a machine-shop over in Savannah. He has now written two letters and wants to have his eldest sister come over; but Inger-Johanna is not seeking for happiness any more—" she added with a peculiar emphasis.
There was a silence.
Grip, with a very trembling hand, placed the plate of bread and butter, which the maid had brought, on the sewing-table. He had drunk the dram on the side of the plate. There was a twitching about his lips.
"It gives me pleasure, exceeding great pleasure," he uttered in a voice which he controlled with difficulty. "You see, Mrs. Gülcke, that Jörgen has amounted to something I count as one of the few rare blades of grass that have grown up out of my poor life."
Sleigh-bells sounded out in the road; a sleigh glided into the yard.