At all events, she had triumphed over Schoolmistress Sophie, who had once tried so hard to set Nikolai against her. "Get out!" How content Fru Ingeborg must be--what delight in this small triumph! Life had changed so much that such things were important to her; she grew heated again when she mentioned it, and pulled at her fingers as she had done in her schooldays. And why should she not be content? A small triumph now had the rank of a bigger one in the old days. Proportions were changed, but her satisfaction was no less. Listen--she has begun to read upstairs; there's the sound of a steady hum. Yes, it's Sunday today, and she, being the best educated of them, naturally reads the service. Bravo! Magnificent! She has extended her self-discipline even to this, for they are all orthodox Christians in this neighborhood. Believing? No, but not hostile, either. One reads Scripture. Rather a clever ruse, that of the clotheshorse. She has become an excellent cook, too, in the peasant style. Delicious broth, without noodles, but otherwise just as it should be, with barley, carrots, and thyme. I doubt whether she has learned this at the domestic science school. I consider all the things she has learned, and find them numerous. Had she, perhaps, been a little overstrung in her talk about children like organ pipes? I don't know, but her nostrils dilated like a mare's as she spoke. She must have known how unwillingly middle-class couples have children, and how short is the love between them: in the daytime they are together so that people might not talk, but the night separates them. She was different, for she would make hers a house of fruitfulness: often she and her husband were apart during the day, when their separate labors called them, but the night united them. Bravo, Fru Ingeborg! XXXVII Really, it was time I was leaving; at least I could have moved across to Petra and the Schoolmaster, who take in travelers. Really I ought to do that.... Nikolai has got his tawny lady working on the farm; she's harnessed to a neat cart that he has made himself and banded with iron. And now the lady carts manure. The tiny farm with its few head of cattle doesn't yield too much of this precious substance, so it is soon spread. Then the lady draws the plow, and looks as though it were no more than the heavy train of a ball dress behind her! Nikolai has never heard of such a horse before, and neither has his wife. I take a walk down to the newly dug field and look at it from every angle. Then I take soil in my hand and feel it and nod, exactly as though I knew something about it. Rich, black soil--sheer perfection. I walk so far that I can see the gargoyles on Petra's hotel--and suddenly turn off the path into the woods, to sheltered groves and catkins and peace. The air is still; spring will soon be here. And so the days wear on.