there for weeks, eating and drinking and idling. It was shameful. Her parents saw nothing wrong in this because it had always been their way of living, and besides it brought them a little money. So the years went by. When the children were grown and Sophie was out of the way, she might have married even then, for she still had half her money left, and being childless again, it was not too late. But no, Petra didn't want to, and it _was_ too late, she said; it was the children's turn to marry now, she said. "Well, she's pretty old now, isn't she?" I said. "Yes, time passes," the schoolmaster replied. "I don't know whether anyone has asked her this year, but last year there was someone--one person--or so I've heard, so I've been told. But Petra didn't want to. If I could only guess what she's waiting for." "Perhaps she's not waiting at all." "Well, it's all the same to me," says the schoolmaster. "But she takes in all these tramps and peddlers and carries on and makes a public nuisance of herself...." As I walked home from the schoolmaster's, I found I understood Petra's arithmetic much better. * * * * * Nikolai has gone back to his workshop in the town, but I have remained behind. It matters little where I am, for the winter makes a dead man of me in any case. To pass the time, I carefully measure the piece of land that Nikolai is going to break up when he can afford it, and I calculate what it will cost him, with drainage and everything: a bare two hundred _kroner_. Then he could keep a horse. It would have been an act of charity to give him this money in case his mother could not. He could have added another field to his land then. "Look here, Petra--why don't you give Nikolai the two hundred _kroner_ he needs for fodder for a horse?" "And four hundred to buy the horse," she muttered. "That makes six." "I haven't got such a lot of six hundred _kroners_ lying about." "But wouldn't the horse be useful for plowing?" A pause. Then: "He can break the ground himself." I was not unfamiliar with this line of reasoning. Everyone has his own problems, and Petra had hers. But the strange thing is that each one of us struggles for himself as though he had a hundred years to live. I once knew two brothers named Martinsen who owned a large farm, the produce of which they sold. Both were well-to-do bachelors without heirs. But both had diseased lungs, the younger brother's much worse than the elder's. In the spring, the younger brother became permanently bedridden, but though he approached his end, he still maintained an interest in everything that went on at the farm. He heard strangers talking in the kitchen and called his brother in. "What is it?" he asked. "Only someone to buy eggs." "What's the price per score now?" His brother told him. "Then give him the small eggs," he cautioned.