Too busy! Yes, you work--you're not ten years older than you were last autumn. You think it's hard work to rest on Sundays, don't you? Dear Madame Henriksen! You and your little daughter knit stockings for the whole family, you let your rooms, you keep your family together like a mother. But you mustn't let your little Louise sit for twelve years on a school form. If you do, you'll hardly ever see her all through her youth, those formative years of her life. And then she can't be like you or learn from you. She'll learn to have children easily enough, but she won't learn to be a mother, and when the time comes for her to keep her home and family together, she will not be able to do it. She'll only know "languages" and mathematics and the story of Bluebeard, but that is not food for the heart of a woman. That is twelve years of continual famine for her soul. "Excuse my asking, but where are you going to?" "I don't know, but I'm going. Why, where should I go? I shall go aboard a steamship and sail, and when I have sailed long enough, I will go ashore. If I find, on looking about me, that I have traveled too far or not far enough, I shall board a ship again and sail on. Once I walked across into Sweden as far as Kalmar and even Öland, but that was too far, so I turned back. No one cares to know where I am, least of all myself." XXXVI You get used to everything; you even get used to the passage of two years. And now it is spring again.... It is market day in the frontier town; my room is noisy, for there is music down in the fields, the roundabout is whirling, the tightrope walker is gossiping outside his tent, and people of every sort throng the village. The crowds are great, and there is even a sprinkling of Norwegians from across the border. Horses snort and whinny, cows low, and trading is brisk. In the display window of the goldsmith across the road, a great cow of silver has made its appearance, a handsome breeder that the local farmers stop to admire. "She's too smart for my crags," says one of them with a laugh. "What do you think's her price?" says another with a laugh. "Why, do you want to buy her?" "No, haven't got fodder enough this year." A man trudges placidly down the road and also stops in front of this window. I see him from behind, and take note of his massive back. He stands there a long time, trying to make up his mind, no doubt, for now and then he scratches his beard. There he goes, sure enough, entering the shop with a ponderous tread. I wonder if he intends to buy the silver cow! It takes him an age, and still he hasn't come out. What on earth is he doing in there? Now that I have begun to watch him, I might as well go the whole hog. So I put on my hat and cross to the goldsmith's window myself, mingling with the other spectators, and watching the door.