The wind blew and howled around the corner of the house, and whistled down through the great plastered chimney-pipe in the hall—and she still, half in her dreams, heard Captain Rönnow's "Trump! trump! trump! trump!"
The next day Ma went about the house as usual with her bunch of keys; she had hardly slept at all that night.
She had become old before her time, like so many other "mas," in the household affairs of that period—old by bearing petty annoyances, by toil and trouble, by never having money enough, by bending and bowing, by continually looking like nothing and being everything—the one on whom the whole anxious care of the house weighed.
But—"One lives for the children."
That was Ma's pet sigh of consolation. And the new time had not yet come to the "mas" with the question whether they were not also bound to realize their own personal lives.
But for the children it was a holiday, and immediately after breakfast they darted into the great room.
There stood the card-table, again moved against the wall, with the cards thrown in a disorderly pile over the paper on which the score had been kept. It had been folded up and burned on one end for a lighter; and by its side, during a preliminary cleaning, the three pipes were lying, shoved aside. One window was still open, notwithstanding the wind blew in so that the fastening hook rattled.
There was something in the room—a pungent odor, which was not good; no, but there was, nevertheless, something about it—something of an actual occurrence.
Outside of the window Great-Ola stood with his hands on the shovel in the steep snow-drift, listening to Marit's account of how the captain had left a broad two-kroner piece for drink money on the table up in the guest-chamber and the lieutenant a shilling under the candlestick, and how the mistress had divided them among the girls.
"The lieutenant was not so butter-fingered," suggested Marit.