A few days later he was dead. His brother lived till his sixty-seventh year, though his lungs were diseased. When anybody came to buy eggs, he always gave him the smallest.... "But," I insisted to Petra, "Nikolai doesn't want to waste time breaking his ground himself, does he? Surely if he works at his trade he'll earn more!" "They don't pay for joinery here," Petra replied. "People buy their chairs and tables from the shops now; it's cheaper." "Then why is Nikolai working as an apprentice?" "I've asked him the same question," she replied. "Nikolai just wants to be a carpenter, but it won't get him anywhere. Still, he can do as he likes." "Well, what else could he do?" A pause. Petra's big mouth is closed. But at length she says: "There's plenty of traffic now and a lot of tourists in the summer, both at Tore Peak and down here on the headland. One time we had two Danes living here; they had traveled on foot. 'If you had a horse, you could have driven us here,' they said to me." "Ah," I thought to myself, "the cat sticking its nose out of the bag!" "'You've got a big house and four rooms,' the Danes said, and 'There are high mountains and big woods,' they said, 'and fish in the fjord and fish in the river; there are lots of things here, and there's a broad road here,' they said. Nikolai was standing next to them and heard it all, too. 'Now we're here,' they said, 'but we can't get away again unless we walk.'" Just to say something, I asked her: "Four rooms--I thought you only had three?" "Yes, but the workshop could be turned into a room, too," the big mouth replied. "So that's it!" I thought. With hardly a pause, I continued: "But if Nikolai were going to deal with tourists, he'd have to get a horse, wouldn't he?" "Well, I suppose we could have managed it," Petra replied. "It's four hundred _kroner_." "Yes," she said, "and the carriage a hundred and fifty." "But this land won't feed a horse!" "What do other people feed horses on?" she asked. "They buy sacks of oats on the headland." "That's eighteen _kroner_ a sack." "No, seventeen. And you earn as much as that on your first tourist." Yes, Petra had it all figured out; she was the born landlady, and had grown up in a lodginghouse. She could cook, too, for had she not put two snakes of Italian macaroni in the barley broth? The money for coffee, for the bed at night and waffles in the morning, had grown so dear to her that she hid it away, watched it increase, and grew rich on it. She did not produce like other peasant women, but no one can do everything at one time, and Petra was a parasite. She did not want to live by earning something; she wanted to live on the tourists who earned enough themselves, and could afford to come. Splendor and Englishmen, no doubt, in these parts! If it all works out as it should--and it probably will. * * * * *