Father is hardly outside the door when an idea strikes him. Instantly he understands why he has no strength in his hands. It is still quite early in the morning and he has not consumed anything which could set the blood in motion. If he were to step into a café and have a cognac, he would get back his strength and could manage without help. This is better than calling the janitor. Then father goes into the street to try and hunt up a café. When he returns to the little apartment on the court, it is eight o'clock in the evening. In father's youth, when he attended the Academy, he had lived at the south end of the city. He was then a member of a double quartette, mostly made up of choristers and petty tradesmen, who used to meet in a cellar near Mosebacke. Father had taken a notion to go and see if the little cellar was still there. It was, in fact, and father had the luck to run across a pair of old comrades who were seated there having their breakfast. They had received him with the greatest delight, had invited him to breakfast, and had celebrated his advent in Stockholm in the friendliest way possible. When the breakfast was over, finally, father wanted to go home and unpack his furniture, but his friends persuaded him to remain and take dinner with them. This function was so long drawn out that he hadn't been able to go home until around eight o'clock. And it had cost him more than a slight effort to tear himself away from the lively place that early. When father comes home, the boys are in the dark, for they have no matches. Father has a match in his pocket, and when he has lighted a little stump of a candle, which luckily had come along with their furnishings, he sees that the boys are hot and dusty, but well and happy and apparently very well pleased with their day. In the rooms the furniture is arranged alongside the walls, the boxes have been removed and straw and papers have been swept away. Hugo is just turning down the boys' beds in the outer room. The inner room is to be father's bedroom, and there stands his bed, turned down with as great care as he could possibly wish. Now a sudden revulsion of feeling possesses him. When he came home, he was displeased with himself because he had gone away from his work and had left the boys without food; but now, when he sees that they are in good spirits and not in any distress, he regrets that, for their sakes, he should have left his friends; and he becomes irritable and quarrelsome.