ke things much to heart.
"Here's the children growing up day by day," says he, though, for that
matter, there's always new little ones coming to take their place. The
ones that are grown up and out in the world can keep themselves, and
send home a bit now and again. There's Barbro married at Maaneland,
and Helge out at the herring fishery; they send home something in
money or money's worth as often as they can; ay, even Katrine, doing
waiting at home, managed, strangely enough, to slip a five-_Krone_
note into her father's hand last winter, when things were looking
extra bad. "There's a girl for you," said Brede, and never asked her
where she'd got the money, or what for. Ay, that was the way! Children
with a heart to think of their parents and help them in time of need!

Brede is not altogether pleased with his boy Helge in that respect; he
can be heard at times standing in the store with a little group about
him, developing his theories as to children and their duty toward
their parents. "Look you, now, my boy, Helge; if he smokes tobacco a
bit, or takes a dram now and then, I've nothing against that, we've
all been young in our time. But 'tis not right of him to go sending
one letter home after another and nothing but words and wishes in.
'Tis not right to set his mother crying. 'Tis the wrong road for a
lad. In days gone by, things were different. Children were no sooner
grown than they went into service and started sending home a little to
help. And quite right, too. Isn't it their father and mother had borne
them under their breast first of all, and sweating blood to keep the
life in them all their tender years? And then to forget it all!"

It almost seemed as if Helge had heard that speech of his father's,
for there came a letter from him after with money in--fifty _Kroner_,
no less. And then Bredes had a great time; ay, in their endless
extravagance they bought both meat and fish for dinner, and a lamp all
hung about with lustres to hang from the ceiling in the best room.

They managed somehow, and what more could they ask? Bredes, they kept
alive, lived from hand to mouth, but without great fear. What more
could they wish for?

"Here's visitors indeed!" says Brede, showing Isak and Eleseus into
the room with the new lamp. "And I'd never thought to see. Isak,
you're never going away yourself, and all?"

"Nay, only to the smith's for something, 'tis no more."

"Ho! 'Tis Eleseus, then, going off south again?