had asked to have her breakfast
there for once in a way--she suddenly began to laugh. "What ARE you
about now?" she asked teasingly.

"Shaving," said Peer, beginning operations.

"Shaving! Are you so desperate to be grand to-day that you must scrape
all your skin off? You know there's nothing else to shave."

"You hold your tongue. Little do you know what I've got in front of me
to-day."

"What can it be? You're not going courting an old widow with twelve
children, are you?"

"If you want to know, I'm going to that schoolmaster fellow, and going
to wring my savings-bank book out of him."

Louise sat up at this. "My great goodness!" she said.

Yes; he had been working himself up to this for a year or more, and now
he was going to do it. To-day he would show what he was made of--whether
he was a snivelling child, or a man that could stand up to any
dressing-gown in the world. He was shaving for the first time--quite
true. And the reason was that it was no ordinary day, but a great
occasion.

His toilet over, he put on his best hat with a flourish, and set out.

Louise stayed at home all the morning, waiting for his return. And at
last she heard him on the stairs.

"Puh!" he said, and stood still in the middle of the room.

"Well? Did you get it?"

He laughed, wiped his forehead, and drew a green-covered book from his
coat-pocket. "Here we are, my girl--there's fifty crowns a month for
three years. It's going to be a bit of a pinch, with fees and books, and
living and clothes into the bargain. But we'll do it. Father was one of
the right sort, I don't care what they say."

"But how did you manage it? What did the schoolmaster say?"

"'Do you suppose that you--you with your antecedents--could ever pass
into the Technical College?' he said. And I told him I HAD passed. 'Good
heavens! How could you possibly qualify?' and he shifted his glasses
down his nose. And then: 'Oh, no! it's no good coming here with tales of
that sort, my lad.' Well, then I showed him the certificate, and he got
much meeker. 'Really!' he said, and 'Dear me!' and all that. But I say,
Louise--there's another Holm entered for the autumn term."

"Peer, you don't mean--your half-brother?"

"And old Dressing-gown said it would never do--never! But I said it
seemed to me there must be room in the world for me as well, and I'd
like that bank book now, I said. 'You seem to fancy you have some legal
right to it,' he said, and got perfectly f