The things we do!

Was that enough?
H'm! A tidy bit, for sure, but still.... And some might say 'twas enough,
but....
How much was it I had given her?
A five-Kroner note.
Well, perhaps it was barely enough; I felt in my pocket for some more.
"No, mother, it was a ten-Kroner," said Petter. "And that's too much;
you'll have to give him something back."
The old woman opens her hand, looks at the note, and turns so very
surprised all at once.
"Why, so it is, ten Kroner, yes.... I didn't properly look. Why, then,
'tis right enough, and many thanks...."
Her husband, in embarrassment, starts talking to the two lads of what he'd
been reading in the paper; nasty accident; hand crushed in a
threshing-machine. The girls pretended not to notice me, but sat like two
cats all the time, with necks drawn in and eyes as thin as knife blades.
Nothing to stay for here--good-bye to them all.
The old woman comes out in the passage and tries making up to me.
"If only you'd lend us just one of those bottles now," she says, "'twould
be a real kindness, that it would.


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