gh thing to
be selling something, to feel money in her fingers, ready cash. Since
they had come down here they had managed nicely, selling coffee in
earnest now, and housing a deal of folk with nowhere else to lay their
heads. A blessing to travellers, is Brede's wife. She has a good
helper, of course, in Katrine, her daughter, a big girl now and clever
at waiting--though that is only for the time, of course; not long
before little Katrine must have something better than waiting on folk
in her parents' house. But for the present, they are making money
fairly well, and that is the main thing. The start had been decidedly
favourable, and might have been better if the storekeeper had not run
short of cakes and sweet biscuits to serve with the coffee; here were
all the feast-day folk calling for cakes with their coffee, biscuits
and cakes! 'Twas a lesson to the storekeeper to lay in a good supply
another time.

The family, and Brede himself, live as best they can on their takings.
A good many meals are nothing but coffee and stale cakes left over,
but it keeps them alive, and gives the children a delicate, sort of
refined appearance. 'Tis not every one has cakes with their coffee,
say the village folk. Ay, Bredes are doing well, it seems; they even
manage to keep a dog, that goes round begging among the customers and
gets bits here and there and grows fat on it. A good fat dog about the
place is a mighty fine advertisement for a lodging-house; it speaks
for good feeding anywhere.

Brede, then, is husband and father in the house, and apart from that
position, has got on variously beside. He had been once more installed
as Lensmand's assistant and deputy, and had a good deal to do that way
for a time. Unfortunately, his daughter Barbro had fallen out with
the Lensmand's wife last autumn, about a trifling matter, a mere
nothing--indeed, to tell the truth, a flea; and Brede himself is
somewhat in disfavour there since. But Brede counts it no great loss,
after all; there are other families that find work for him now on
purpose to annoy the Lensmand's; he is frequently called upon, for
instance, to drive for the doctor, and as for the parsonage, they'd
gladly send for Brede every time there's a pig to be killed, and
more--Brede says so himself.

But for all that there are hard times now and again in Brede's house;
'tis not all the family are as fat and flourishing as the dog. Still,
Heaven be praised, Brede is not a man to ta