It amuses me to see how skilfully Richard’s eldest can drive an automobile. If only he can avoid accidents.
Richard himself is aging, but his little wife sits so upright in the car. She wears well.
Since Richard caught sight of me one day by chance he always looks up and bows, and then we all bow, ... I overhear the lanky youth say, “Papa, we are passing your old wife,” and then they laugh.
Yes, I should like to see the home in the old Market Place once more. Probably I should hardly recognise it, or perhaps Richard, from long habit, has kept things much the same.
The eldest son is to succeed to the business, of course, but the second looks to me so dandified. I know this for certain that none of Richard’s sons will ever work out in the fields in clogs and woollen shirts. And their mother will never have the joy of darning stockings with holes in them as big as goose’s eggs. While I sit with a pair of these coarse, huge, manly socks in which my hand is absolutely drowned, I feel to the full extent a mother’s glorious rights. I only wish the holes were double the size, so that the time they take to mend lasted longer.
I have been and bought the pan for cooking oxeyes in, and I have promised Kelly and Oluf that every time they come they shall have oxeyes baked in butter. Magna requires nothing but her horrid nut-suet which has no flavour. She alone can eat it. Dear, dear boys.
Dear Agnete,
It was well that you wrote to me this time, and not to your mother. You are not to trouble her with your unhappy affairs, do you understand? Every time that she gets a letter from you she shuts herself up and cries. Lately I have read quite a number of your letters, and I must confess that I was not pleased with them.
At one time you presumed to sit in judgment on your mother’s life, and now you blame her because yours is a failure. You have no right to do it.
You cannot justly lay your married wretchedness at either your mother’s or your husband’s door. Its origin is to be sought in a train of circumstances. You must know, though you seem to have forgotten it, that it was not your mother who gave in to your desire to go to the French Convent School. It was my doing that you went. I sent you for her peace of mind’s sake.