This was a new idea to Olaf, and it gave him pleasure. "Ah, if Eric had the Fru Prostinna for his mother, she would train him so wisely and discreetly; whereas, Viola is never the same person one day that she is the next. She lets the children do so many things I was not allowed to do at their age. And the Fru Prostinna would have made a man of Eric. Not a hard-working peasant, a great rough fellow like myself, but, who knows? a clergyman perhaps, with his parish and his schools, and his farms and his houses!" And Olaf began to feel aggrieved, and as if Viola, in being of his own rank in life, and uninstructed and capricious, had done him a wrong and deprived him of the chance of giving a refined and educated mother to his children. But when she came, at the close of service, to meet him, dressed in her becoming holiday costume, her red bodice and white cap, her face looked, as it always did, home-like and very dear. He laughed at himself for the foolish thoughts that a momentary ambition had awakened, and as they sat on the grass, eating their dinner together, told her what the pastor's good wife had said to him. "But you only make baskets and things of that sort in the winter evenings," said Viola. "And such work as you are doing now, he cannot possibly do. But my work he can learn, and that he shall do forthwith." So the next day, when she swept her house she put a little broom into Eric's hands, saying, "Sweep now, as I do. Don't just move your brush in the air; do just as I do, and make the floor clean for mother." Eric obeyed, and when he saw that his little brush helped to beautify the floor, he used it with delight, singing joyfully to himself the while, and doing his work with his mother's exactitude. So it was in almost all the details of the day; and when, in the afternoon, she sat in her well-ordered room, in her clean, fresh dress, and began to sew, she gave Eric, not a bit of waste cloth, but part of a little garment, saying: "See, now, dear Eric, when I sew I join these pieces together, and make your little sleeve. But when you sew you make nothing. You only move your arms as I move mine." Then Eric watched her more closely, and saw that she pulled her needle through her work, now in, now out; imitated her with joy, and really made the little sleeve. Viola showed it to his father in the evening, and they all thought it a wonderful affair, as it indeed was, for the stitches were not the unwilling, irregular workmanship of compulsion, but the result of a taste that must indulge itself in aiming at perfection. Eric, himself, was not satisfied with his sleeve because it was not so nicely done as his mother's, but she laughed at the idea of his expecting at his first attempt to equal her needlework, of which she was very proud.