His mother is hard-working and honest; she has a few animals to see to, and usually she is washing something or other, even if it is nothing more than some empty potato sacks. She cooks on the kitchen stove, and keeps her pots and pans shining. She is cleanly, and strains her milk through a muslin cloth, which she afterward washes and rinses twice. But she picks food remnants from between the prongs of forks with a hairpin!
A mirror, pictures of the German Kaiser's family, and a crucifix hang on the walls of the living room; in one corner are two shelves with oddments, including a hymnbook and a book of sermons. They are still simple and orthodox in these parts. The rest of the furniture in the house, the chairs and tables and cupboards and a cleverly constructed chest, have all been made by Nikolai himself.
Nikolai is just as slow and speechless here as in the town; the day after we arrived he went out to the woods without telling his mother. When I asked for him, she said:
"I saw him take the sleigh, so I expect he's gone to the woods."
His mother's name is Petra, and judging from her appearance she cannot be much over forty; like her son, she is ruddy and big-muscled, with a fair complexion and thick, graying hair, a veritable lion's mane. Her eyes are good companions to her hair--dark, and a little worn now, but still good enough to see far and sharply across the fjord. She, too, is taciturn, like all the peasants here, and usually keeps her large mouth shut.
I ask her how long she has been a widow, and she says, "For nearly a generation--no, don't let me tell a lie," she corrects herself. "Sophie is four and twenty now, and it was the year after her birth that he died."
They had only been married a couple of years. Nikolai is six and twenty.
I ponder over this arithmetic, but as I am old and incapable, I cannot make it tally.
Petra was very proud of her children, especially Sophie, who had gone to school and passed an examination, and now held such an important post. Of course her inheritance was used up, but she had her learning instead. Nobody could ever take that from her. A big, handsome girl, Sophie--look, here is her portrait.
I said I had met her at Tore Peak.