Treine has time to recollect all this, because it is some minutes before Yössele manages to steal on tiptoe past all the beds. Every step he takes echoes at her heart, but as to going out to meet him--not for any money. There--he nearly fell! Now he is just outside the partition walls. She breathes again. "Good evening!" he says in a low voice, with downcast eyes. "A good year to you!" she answers lower still. Then: "Are you hungry?" she asks. "Are _you_? Wait." He slips out between the partitions and returns with washed and dripping hands. She gives him a towel. On a corner of the table there is some bread and some salt and the now uncovered soup. He sits down on his bed, on the top of all the bed-clothes, she on hers, with the onions. They eat slowly, talking with their eyes--what about, do you think?--and with their lips about the way to earn a living. "Well, how are you getting on?" "Oh," he sighs, "three pupils already!" "And that is all we have to depend on?" she asks sadly. "_Ma!_" he answers with gentle reproach. "God be praised!" she is consoling herself and him together. "God be praised; but that only makes one hundred and twenty rubles," he sighs. "Well, why do you sigh?" "Add it up," he answers; "one ruble a week rent, that's twenty-six rubles a season. And then I'm in debt--there were wedding expenses." "What do you mean?" she asks astonished. He smiles. "Silly little thing! My father couldn't afford to give us anything more than his consent." "Well, what do they come to altogether?" she interrupts. "Altogether," he goes on, "twelve rubles. That makes thirty-eight. What remains over for food?" She calculates: "Eighty-two, I suppose." "For twenty-six weeks." "Well, after all," she says, "it's over three rubles a week." "And what," he asks sadly, "what about wood--and candles--Sabbaths and holidays?" "_Ett_, God is faithful," she tries to cheer him, "and I can do something, too. Look, I have bought some onions. Eggs are very cheap. I will buy some eggs, too. In a week or so, perhaps, five dozen eggs will yield a little profit." "But just calculate," he persists, "what we must spend on firing and lights." "Why, next to nothing. Perhaps one ruble a week. That leaves us--" "And Sabbaths and holidays! Child, what are you thinking of?" And the word "child" falls so softly, so kindly, from his lips, that she must needs smile. "Come, say the Blessing, quick!" she says, "and let other things be till to-morrow. It's time to go to sleep." Then she feels ashamed, lowers her eyelids, and says as if she were excusing herself: "You come so late!" with a yawn that is half a sham. He leans toward her across the little table. "Silly child," he whispers, "I come in late on purpose, so that we may eat together, do you see? For a teacher, you know, it's not the thing."