"Where does Carpenter Nikolai work?"
"I don't know," she replied. "Oh, yes, I do know. We're near there, and I can show you if you like. What do you want to see him for?"
"Nothing. I just wondered if he's at a good place, with a competent master."
Why did I, indeed, want to see Carpenter Nikolai, the artisan? Yet I have visited him and made his acquaintance. He is a bull in stature, strong and plain-featured, a man of few words. Last Saturday we saw the town together; why, I don't know, but I suggested it myself.
I made friends with the carpenter for my own sake, because of my loneliness. I no longer went to the benches by the shore, as the weather was a little too cold, and Miss Torsen interested me very little now; she had changed so much since returning to the town. She had become more the ordinary type of girl, not in any one thing, but in general. She thought of nothing but vanities and nonsense, and seemed quite to have forgotten her last summer's wholesome, bitter view of life. Now she was back at school again, in her leisure hours meeting the gentleman named Flaten, and this occupied all of her time. Either she had no depths, or she had been vitiated in the vital years of adolescence.
"What do you expect me to do?" she asked. "Of course I'm going to school again; I've been going to school ever since I was a child. I'm no good at anything else. I can only learn--that's what I'm used to. There isn't much I can think or do on my own, and I don't enjoy it either. So what do you expect?"
No, what could I expect?
Carpenter Nikolai went to the circus. He was not much surprised at anything he saw there, or he pretended not to be. The acrobatics on horseback--"Well, not bad, but after all--!" The tiger--"I thought tigers were much bigger!" Besides, his big, heavy head seemed preoccupied with other thoughts, and he paid little attention to the women riders who were doing their tricks.
On the way home he said: