One of Lifes Slaves | Page 4

sit by the cradle, her eyes red with
weeping, longing for her child, and would neither eat nor drink.
This was a matter of no little importance. A nurse must be kept in good
spirits; her frame of mind has such an immense influence on her health,
and that again on the health of the child.
Mrs. Veyergang had all sorts of good things brought in from the
pastry-cook's to enliven her; silk handkerchiefs and aprons abounded,
and the servants at home received injunctions to inquire after Barbara's
boy at the tinsmith's.
There was praise and nothing but praise to be given every time the
Consul-General's Lars stopped there in driving past, and when Barbara
only received a message of that kind, she could be happy and contented
the whole month.
She was made much of, as she very soon felt. If she said or wanted
anything, she was obeyed as if she were the mistress herself. And
handsome clothes with constant change of fine underclothing, not to
mention meat and drink--hardly anything of what she was accustomed
to call work, her hands had already become quite soft and supple. And
she felt that she was beginning to be attached to the two little ones
whom she tended day and night.
* * * * *
One day, after the Consul's family had returned from the bathing-place,
Barbara set out for the tinsmith's. It was late in the autumn. She could
hardly ever remember the road out there so bad and muddy as it was
now. Both her boots and the bottom of her dress would need cleaning
and washing when she got back again.
The thought that she would soon see her boy put her in a cold
perspiration; but of course things were best as they were, now that she
could pay so well for him.

When she turned in by the wooden fence and saw the cottage with its
familiar cracked windows in front of her, she slackened her pace a little.
A feeling of apprehension suddenly came over her.
And then the neighbour's wife, whom she had so often helped, came
out and began to talk and give her information, rattling on like a
steam-engine. There had been war among the neighbours in the
tinsmith's alley, and now that she saw Barbara herself, the truth should
out, the real, actual truth.
The tinsmith's people need not imagine that other people hadn't got
eyes in their head! Everything they possessed had gone to the
pawnbroker's; there was barely enough of the tin-ware left to put in his
cracked windows. And what they lived on, nobody round there could
imagine, unless it was the payment they got for that poor little ill-used
boy, that they gave lager-beer to, to keep him quiet. For no one would
put up there now that the police had begun to keep an eye on the
company, not even certain people who were not generally so particular
about their quarters.
"But if you take my advice, Barbara, you'll take the boy to blockmaker
Holman's down at the wharf. They are such nice, respectable people,
and have pitied the boy so when I told them how they were treating him
out here."
Blockmaker Holman, blockmaker Holman! The name rang in her ears
as, heavy-hearted, she entered the tinsmith's.
There he lay among the ragged, dirty clothes, pale, thin and neglected,
with frightened eyes. He began to cry when she took him up; he did not
know her, and she scarcely knew him.
The disappointment--all that she felt--found vent in a rising torrent of
angry words against the tinsmith and his wife.
But at the same time, while she was washing the boy, she felt how big,
coarse and clumsy his face and body were, compared to the two
delicate ones she was accustomed to. She saw now for the first time

how impossible it would be to keep him herself.
But he should go to the blockmaker's, poor boy! Her name wasn't
Barbara if she didn't get her mistress to see to that at once--as early as
to-morrow.
She returned home with a face red and swollen with crying, and was
inconsolable the whole evening until her mistress came down from the
office with the promise that the matter should be arranged.
And thus it was that Nikolai came to blockmaker Holman's.

CHAPTER II
A STRICT DISCIPLINARIAN
It is in some ways a blessing that those who have suffered hardship and
been neglected in their babyhood, do not remember anything about
it--and yet perhaps something clings to them.
So, at any rate, Mrs. Holman declared. From the very first day the boy
came into the house, she could see he had been brought up in a thieves'
nest. His eyes were so wise and watchful,