wo.

She must have some project in her head! Perhaps she was thinking of
going out to service again.

And one evening when he came home he found a red wooden box and a pair
of laced boots upon the chest. His mother must have been there!

Half an hour later she appeared. She had only been out to buy a little
new rye-bread, cheese, and butter to take up to her lodgings this
evening.

In the meantime she cut some for herself and offered some to him.

Her ample figure, in addition to her effects, almost filled Nikolai's
narrow little bedroom. She had become rather short of breath, and
acquired a double-chin with so much sitting indoors; the lower part of
her face, which, in the brilliancy of youth, had been covered with pure,
healthy mountain roses, now, as it moved in the process of eating, gave
only the impression of powerful crushing with still solid teeth, in
which, however, toothache, from many scalding cups of coffee, had made
here and there serious inroads. While she sat on the chest and he on the
bed, she gave expression to the following:

The farmer with whom she had bargained to live--for eighteen dollars
a year and help at the busy seasons, while she found herself in
coffee--was so pinching and mean about the board, that she had been
obliged to buy one thing and another herself; well, he had seen the ham
himself, and knew what she had been accustomed to at the Veyergangs'.
She could truly say that she had swallowed her food with tears many a
time, when she thought of all that she had done for Ludvig and Lizzie,
that she had carried them in her arms and been more to them than their
own mother. And then to think that the reward of all this should be hard
work in the hay and corn harvest! No, she was praised by too many mouths
for that!

She had waited patiently, too, thinking they would remember old Barbara.
Oh no! one would have to remind them one's self, if that were to be!

But now that she had Nikolai there, she had thought and meditated and
reflected about setting up a little shop in the town. And she had been
out to the Consul's to-day.

He was cross when she went into the office, and snappish; but she knew
him, and began talking cleverly:

"How is mistress and Mr. Ludvig and Miss Lizzie, might I be so bold as
to ask? Bless me, they must have grown so tall and so grand now, that
they couldn't be expected to know a poor servant again!"

"'Thin--thin as laths,' he laughed. 'You might easily hold th