It was more at a pressure than by regularly knocking that the door to the sitting-room was opened, and Grip cautiously entered.
"You, Grip? No, no, not by the door, sit down up there by the window. Then my sister will get you a little something to eat,--oh, you can manage to eat a little bread and butter and salt meat, can't you? Well, so you are up this way, Grip?"
"Seeking a chance to teach, I may say, Mrs. Gülcke," was the evasive reply. "I am told you have heard from Jörgen over in America," he hastily added, to get away from the delicate subject.
"Yes, just think: Jörgen is a well-to-do, rich manager of a machine-shop over in Savannah. He has now written two letters and wants to have his eldest sister come over; but Inger-Johanna is not seeking for happiness any more--" she added with a peculiar emphasis.
Grip, with a very trembling hand, placed the plate of bread and butter, which the maid had brought, on the sewing-table. He had drunk the dram on the side of the plate. There was a twitching about his lips.
"It gives me pleasure, exceeding great pleasure," he uttered in a voice which he controlled with difficulty. "You see, Mrs. Gülcke, that Jörgen has amounted to something I count as one of the few rare blades of grass that have grown up out of my poor life."
Sleigh-bells sounded out in the road; a sleigh glided into the yard.
Grip comprehended that he would not be wanted just now, and rose.
Thinka hastened out into a side room and came in again with a dollar bill--"Take it, Grip--a little assistance till you get some pupils."
His hand hesitated a little before he took it. "One--must--must--" He seized his cap and went out.
Down by the gate he stopped a little, and looked back. The window had been thrown open there.
"Airing out after Grip," he muttered bitterly, while he took the direction of the valley, with his comforter high up around his neck and his cap, which down in the main parish had replaced his old, curled up felt hat, down over his ears; in the cold east wind he protected his hands in the pockets of his old thin coat, which was flapping about his emaciated form.
It was not an uncommon route, whither he went over the mountains in his widely extended rambles in the summer, or, as now, in the short, dark midwinter, when he was obliged to confine himself to the highway.
