er."

Chapter VI

So things went on till winter was far spent. Now that Louise, too, was
a wage-earner, and could help with the expenses, they could dine
luxuriously at an eating-house every day, if they pleased, on meat-cakes
at fourpence a portion. They managed to get a bed for Peer that could
be folded up during the day, and soon learned, too, that good manners
required they should hang up Louise's big woollen shawl between them
as a modest screen while they were dressing and undressing. And Louise
began to drop her country speech and talk city-fashion like her brother.

One thought often came to Peer as he lay awake. "The girl is the very
image of mother, that's certain--what if she were to go the same way?
Well, no, that she shall not. You're surely man enough to see to that.
Nothing of that sort shall happen, my dear Froken Hagen."

They saw but little of each other during the day, though, for they were
apart from early in the morning till he came home in the evening. And
when he lectured her, and warned her to be careful and take no notice
of men who tried to speak to her, Louise only laughed. When Klaus Brock
came up one day to visit them, and made great play with his eyes while
he talked to her, Peer felt much inclined to take him by the scruff of
the neck and throw him downstairs.

When Christmas-time was near they would wander in the long evenings
through the streets and look in at the dazzlingly lit shop-windows, with
their tempting, glittering show of gold and finery. Louise kept asking
continually how much he thought this thing or that cost--that lace,
or the cloak, or the stockings, or those gold brooches. "Wait till you
marry that doctor," Peer would say, "then you can buy all those
things." So far neither of them had an overcoat, but Peer turned up his
coat-collar when he felt cold, and Louise made the most of her thick
woollen dress and a pair of good country gloves that kept her quite
warm. And she had adventured on a hat now, in place of her kerchief, and
couldn't help glancing round, thinking people must notice how fine she
was.

On Christmas Eve he carried up buckets of water from the yard, and she
had a great scrubbing-out of the whole room. And then they in their
turn had a good wash, helping each other in country fashion to scrub
shoulders and back.

Peer was enough of a townsman now to have laid in a few little presents
to give his sister; but the girl, who had not been used to su