"If only it lasts, if only it lasts! She's so overwrought; living on her
nerves. And pregnant again. But what splendid resolution she shows, and
how she's matured in these two years! But it has cost her a great deal,
too.
"Good luck to you, Ingeborg, good luck!"
At all events, she had triumphed over Schoolmistress Sophie, who had once
tried so hard to set Nikolai against her. "Get out!" How content Fru
Ingeborg must be--what delight in this small triumph! Life had changed so
much that such things were important to her; she grew heated again when
she mentioned it, and pulled at her fingers as she had done in her
schooldays. And why should she not be content? A small triumph now had the
rank of a bigger one in the old days. Proportions were changed, but her
satisfaction was no less.
Listen--she has begun to read upstairs; there's the sound of a steady hum.
Yes, it's Sunday today, and she, being the best educated of them,
naturally reads the service. Bravo! Magnificent! She has extended her
self-discipline even to this, for they are all orthodox Christians in this
neighborhood. Believing? No, but not hostile, either. One reads Scripture.
Rather a clever ruse, that of the clotheshorse.
She has become an excellent cook, too, in the peasant style. Delicious
broth, without noodles, but otherwise just as it should be, with barley,
carrots, and thyme. I doubt whether she has learned this at the domestic
science school. I consider all the things she has learned, and find them
numerous. Had she, perhaps, been a little overstrung in her talk about
children like organ pipes? I don't know, but her nostrils dilated like a
mare's as she spoke. She must have known how unwillingly middle-class
couples have children, and how short is the love between them: in the
daytime they are together so that people might not talk, but the night
separates them. She was different, for she would make hers a house of
fruitfulness: often she and her husband were apart during the day, when
their separate labors called them, but the night united them.
Bravo, Fru Ingeborg!