"So you are going to start, my boy?"
"Captain, can—will you lend me—" in his first courage of the morning he had thought of five, but it sank to four even while he was on the stairs, and now in the presence of the captain to—"three dollars? I have used up every shilling I had to get to Christiania with. You shall have them by money order immediately."
The captain hemmed and hawed. He had almost suspected something of the sort yesterday in the fellow's face—yes, such a student was the kind of a fellow to send back a money order!
There began to be a sort of an ugly grin on his face. But suddenly he assumed a good-natured, free and easy mien. "Three dollars, you say?—If I had three in the house, my boy! But here, by fits and starts in the summer, it is as if the ready money was clean swept away." He stuck his unoccupied hand in the breast of his uniform coat, and looked vacantly out into the air. "Ah! hm-hm," came after a dreadfully oppressive pause. "If I was only sure of getting them back again, I would see if I could pick up three or four shillings at any rate in Ma's household box—so that you could get down to the sheriff or the judge. They are excellent people, I know them; they help at the first word."
The captain, puffing vigorously at his pipe, went into the kitchen to Ma, who was standing in the pantry and dealing out the breakfast. She had the hay-making and the whole of the outside affairs upon her shoulders.
He was away quite a little time.
"Well, if Ma did not have the three dollars after all! So I have got them for you. And so good-by from Gilje! Let us hear when you get there."
"You shall hear in a money order," and the student strode jubilantly away.
It is true that at first Ma had stopped for a moment and pinched her lips together, and then she had declared as her most settled opinion that, if the captain was going to help at all, it must be with all three. He did not seem one of those who shirked everything—was not one who was all surface—and it would not do at all to let him beg at the judge's, the sheriff's, and perhaps the minister's, because he could not get a loan of more than three shillings at Gilje.