He merely laughed good-naturedly again, and told her to eat if she thought it was good enough. "We'll soon be there now," she said as she ate. "Have you someone to go to?" "Oh, yes, I have a sister." Slowly and thoughtfully he took another sandwich and turned it over, looking at it absently before he took a bite out of it. When he had finished one mouthful, he took another. And when he had finished that one, too, he said: "I thought that as I'm going to stay in town over the winter, I'd better learn something. And what with the farm as well--" "Yes, indeed." "You think so too?" "Oh, yes. I think so." Why did he tell her about his private affairs? She had private affairs of her own. She thanked him for the sandwiches and got up. As the boat drew alongside the pier, he offered her his hand and said: "My name is Nikolai." "Oh, yes?" "I thought in case we meet again--Nikolai Palm--but I expect the town's too big--" "Yes, I expect it is. Well, thanks ever so much for all your kindness. Good-bye." XXXII I ask Miss Torsen: "Have you met the carpenter since?" "What carpenter? Oh--no, I haven't. I only told you about him because he's a sort of mutual acquaintance." "Acquaintance?" "Yes, of yours and mine. Only indirectly, of course. He happens to be the brother of that schoolmistress Miss Palm that was at the Tore Peak farm last summer." "Well, the world's a small place. We all belong to the same family." "And that's why I've told you all this about him." "But you didn't find out about this relationship on the boat, did you? So you must have met him since." "Yes,--well, no, that is to say I've seen him a few times, but not to speak to. We just said good morning and how are you and so on. Then he said he was her brother." "Ha, ha, ha!" "It was just in passing, quite by accident." This gave me a good opportunity for saying: "What a lot of things are accidental! It was an accident that I should have stopped under a particular lamppost to look up something, to read a few lines. And then you happened to live there." "That's right." "I expect you and the carpenter will be getting married," I said. "Ha, ha! No, indeed, I shan't marry anyone." "No?" "You have to be pretty naïve to marry." "Well, I don't know that being naïve does any harm--being not quite so clever. Where does your cleverness lead you? Only to being cheated. Because there isn't anybody who's quite clever enough." "I should have thought being clever is just the thing to protect you against being cheated. What else would it do?" "Exactly. What else? But the trouble is we trust our cleverness so much that we get cheated that way. Or else we let things go from bad to worse, because why should we worry? After all we've got our cleverness to help get us out of the mess!" "Well, in that case it's pretty hopeless!" "Relying on your cleverness--yes. That was your own opinion last summer, you know."