her Kristofa
had afterwards agreed or disagreed with her. It was as if she could not
talk of anything else!

Yet it was not so bad, he supposed, so long as it was she herself who
chattered and talked about it to him.

But the perspiration would stream from him in the smithy, when he stood
and thought about it all up there. He felt as though he were under a
screw.

Why should not the poor man's possession be left in peace? Here he was
toiling away, and would give every drop of blood in his body to be able
to marry; and that other one, who had his pockets full, and could have
any fine lady for the asking--they were worse than wild beasts and
murderers! And amidst all this the time was passing.

He had blessed both the autumn mud and darkness, which put an end to all
the running about in the evening; and now winter days and snow had come.
When he reckoned up--and he was always reckoning--he found that by the
New Year he would be worth seventy-five specie-dollars--what he had
almost starved himself to save--and of these his mother had had
forty-five, and since then thirteen more. He had made a half bargain
about a room with a kitchen at a fair price per month, and what he
wanted for the house, too. The last time he had lent his mother money,
she had said that he need not be afraid, she was selling the goods and
sweeping in the profits.

Everything was in order, so the battle with Mrs. Holman had better be
fought at once. And when he laid before her his journeyman's
credentials, his seventy-five dollars, and his regular earnings, with
the advance he was to have from the New Year at Haegberg's, she would
have to be so kind as to give in.

It was on one of the days between Christmas and the New Year that he
went up to his mother to let her know that he must have his money out in
February. Then he would go to Mrs. Holman.

It struck him that his mother was rather confused and forgetful while
she made the coffee.

She thought she was half crazy to-day, she said; but he should have his
coffee, and Christmas should not pass without his having something good;
it had not been the custom where she was brought up.

Oh, dear! So Nikolai wanted his money back already. She had grown so
forgetful, that she had not remembered that it was so soon. And just
before Christmas she had had to settle a bill for coffee and sugar
which, upon her word, she had not thought or known would come in until
after the fair or at Midsummer! But h