Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗

longer a word against it; she had come to her senses again, and said: “Ay, do as you think best.” Ay, Inger was grown reasonable now; ’tis no little thing to come to one’s senses again after a spell. Inger was no longer full of heat that must out, no longer full of wild blood to be kept in check, the winter had cooled her; nothing beyond the needful warmth in her now. She was getting stouter, growing fine and stately. A wonderful woman to keep from fading, keep from dying off by degrees; like enough because she had bloomed so late in life. Who can say how things come about? Nothing comes from a single cause, but from many. Was Inger not in the best repute with the smith’s wife? What could any smith’s wife say against her? With her disfigurement, she had been cheated of her spring, and later, had been set in artificial air to lose six years of her summer; with life still in her, what wonder her autumn gave an errant growth? Inger was better than blacksmiths’ wives⁠—a little damaged, a little warped, but good by nature, clever by nature⁠ ⁠… ay.⁠ ⁠…

Father and son drive down, they come to Brede Olsen’s lodging-house and set the horse in a shed. It is evening now. They go in themselves.

Brede Olsen has rented the house; an outbuilding it had been, belonging to the storekeeper, but done up now with two sitting-rooms and two bedrooms; none so bad, and in a good situation. The place is well frequented by coffee-drinkers and folk from round about the village going by the boat.

Brede seems to have been in luck for once, found something suited to him, and he may thank his wife for that. ’Twas Brede’s wife had hit on the idea of a coffee-shop and lodging-house, the day she sat selling coffee at the auction at Breidablik; ’twas a pleasant enough 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 everyone 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 take 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