and from Mrs. Veyergang she received one thing after another, as
remembrances. But when, one day, the Consul--very thoughtfully--made her
a present of one of his old travelling trunks, she let her large, heavy
person sink down upon its lid, completely overwhelmed. She could not
bring herself to think, had never believed, that the day would come when
she must part from her mistress and Ludvig and Lizzie--it would kill
her!

This was a direct appeal to the Consul himself, but the answer was not
exactly as Barbara wished. He patted her on the shoulder, saying:

"I'm glad, my dear Barbara, that you feel that you have been well off."

When she went into the Consul's office for a settlement and to receive
her savings-bank book--the amount it contained was a hundred and
fourteen specie-dollars, a result, the Consul said, with which she ought
to be thoroughly satisfied, when she considered the great expense she
had been put to with Nikolai--she declared her intention of resting for
a time before she went out to service again, and had made arrangements
to lodge with a farmer out in the country: she had now been toiling for
others for fourteen years!

The last evening, which she had dreaded so, went more easily than she
had expected. The Consul and his wife were invited to the Willocks'
country-house in the afternoon with the children, so the farewell could
only be a short one, before they got into the carriage.

She was left standing with the feeling of Lizzie's soft fur, which she
had stroked, in her fingers.

CHAPTER IV

A STOLEN INTERVIEW

Holman made his usual turn into Selvig's public-house every evening to
brace himself for his return home. When the ale-bottle had been emptied,
and a proper number of drams consumed, his at first hurried, restless
look was stiffened into a dull, staring, fixed mask. It was the crust
about his heart, far within the unconscious, degraded man, who enjoyed
his daily hour of oblivion to that life-struggle which he had taken upon
himself when he chose to unite his lot inseparably with that of his
duty-breathing wife, that life-struggle in which he continually declared
"pass," and turned aside. When he sat there silently staring over his
glass, it was felt that he was brooding over something, possibly only
the number of drams he had drunk, possibly his bill, possibly, too, a
remote world of thought, where, like a philosopher, he gazed silently
down into unfathomable depths. Or po