As soon as I entered, I saw that the room had been changed. There was too much middle-class frippery: white curtains at the windows, numerous pictures on the walls, a lamp pendent from the ceiling, underneath it in the center of the room a round table and chairs, knickknacks in a china cupboard, a pink-painted spinning wheel, flowers in pots--in short, the room was crowded. This, no doubt, was the sort of thing Fru Ingeborg had been used to and considered in good taste. But in Petra's day, this had been a light and spacious room. "How's your mother?" I asked Nikolai. As usual he was slow to reply. His wife answered for him: "She's very well." I wanted to ask, "Where is she?" but I refrained. "Look, I want to show you something," said Fru Ingeborg. It was the child in his bed--a boy, big and handsome, about a year old. He frowned at me at first, but only for a moment. As soon as he was on his mother's arm, he looked at me without fear. How happy and beautiful the young mother looked! Peerless, indeed, with her eyes full of an inscrutable graciousness she had not possessed before. "What a fine little _man!_" I said, admiring the boy. "I should think he was!" said the mother. * * * * * You get used to everything. The sea air no longer oppresses me; I can speak without losing my breath to the woman who is now the mistress of this house. She likes to talk, too, pouring out her words nervously, as though it had been a long time since she last opened her mouth. What we talked about? Well, we neither asked nor answered questions about measuring angles or analyzing Shakespeare's grammar. Had she ever thought her matriculation would land her up here, amid livestock and Saturday cleaning? Oh, that parody of an education! She had taken the first toddling steps in a dozen sciences, but if she met someone with fully adult knowledge she was lost. She had other things to think about now, her home and her family and the farm. Of course there wasn't much livestock, now that Nikolai's mother had taken half of it with her-- "Has Petra gone away?" Married--to the schoolmaster. No, Petra hadn't wanted to stay when the young wife took possession. One evening a strange man had come to the house, and Petra had wanted to admit him, but Fru Ingeborg would not. She knew who he was and wanted him to leave. So there were quarrels between the older woman and the young one.