ch doings,
had nothing for him, and wept a good deal when she realised it. They ate
cakes from the confectioner's with syrup over them, and drank chocolate,
and then Louise played a hymn-tune, in her best style, on her violin,
and Peer read the Christmas lessons from the prayer-book--it was all
just like what they used to do at Troen on Christmas Eve. And that
night, after the lamp was put out, they lay awake talking over plans for
the future. They promised each other that when they had got well on in
the world, he in his line and she in hers, they would manage to live
near each other, so that their children could play together and grow
up good friends. Didn't she think that was a good idea? Yes, indeed she
did. And did he really mean it? Yes, of course he meant it, really.

But later on in the winter, when she sat at home in the evenings waiting
for him--he often worked overtime--she was sometimes almost afraid.
There was his step on the stairs! If it was hurried and eager she would
tremble a little. For the moment he was inside the door he would burst
out: "Hurrah, my girl! I've learnt something new to-day, I tell you!"
"Have you, Peer?" And then out would pour a torrent of talk about
motors and power and pressures and cylinders and cranes and screws, and
such-like. She would sit and listen and smile, but of course understood
not a word of it all, and as soon as Peer discovered this he would get
perfectly furious, and call her a little blockhead.

Then there were the long evenings when he sat at home reading, by
himself or with his teacher and she had to sit so desperately still that
she hardly dared take a stitch with her needle. But one day he took it
into his head that his sister ought to be studying too; so he set her
a piece of history to learn by the next evening. But time to learn
it--where was that to come from? And then he started her writing to his
dictation, to improve her spelling--and all the time she kept dropping
off to sleep. She had washed so many floors and peeled so many potatoes
in the daytime that now her body felt like lead.

"Look here, my fine girl!" he would storm at her, raging up and down
the room, "if you think you can get on in the world without education,
you're most infernally mistaken." He succeeded in reducing her to
tears--but it wasn't long before her head had fallen forward on the
table again and she was fast asleep. So he realised there was nothing
for it but to help her to bed--