A little later he dropped off to sleep, lying on his back, and breathing still in little unsteady gasps.
Fru Egholm's straw mattress creaked as she rose quietly, and with a gentle touch here and there tucked his bedclothes close about him.
In the next room Hedvig was talking in her sleep--something about cakes....
"_Herregud!_" murmured her mother--"dreaming of cakes means illness. I hope it doesn't mean Emanuel's going to get the chickenpox."
Madam Hermansen came into every house in Knarreby, without exception--whence follows, that she came to Egholm's.
How she managed to effect an entry there, where shutters and bolts were carefully set to hide the shame of poverty, is not stated.
Presumably, she came of herself, like most diseases--and she came again and again, like a series of bad relapses. She literally clung to the Egholms, and almost neglected her other visits therefor.
They were somehow more remarkable than others, she thought. They had a past.
Madam Hermansen herself was tolerated--almost, one might say, esteemed. At any rate, no attempt was ever made to find a cure for her. Egholm enjoyed the abundant laughter with which she greeted even the most diluted sample of his wit, and Fru Egholm needed someone to _confide in_.
It was all very well for _him_. In his all too extensive leisure, he made excursions through the town, spending hours in talk with fishermen down at the harbour, or going off for solitary walks along the shore or in the woods. _She_, on the other hand, could only trip about in the two small rooms, with never a sight of the sun beyond the narrow strip that drew like the hand of a clock across the kitchen floor from four till half-past seven in the morning. And no one to talk to but her husband and the children. Little wonder, then, that the flow of speech so long held back poured forth in flood when Madam Hermansen began deftly working at the sluices.
The talk itself was but a detail, that cropped up before one knew, thought Fru Egholm at times; but if she had not had someone to look at her needlework, why, in the long run, it would mean sinking down to the level of a man.
True, Madam Hermansen was no connoisseur of art, but a dollymop who never achieved more than the knitting of stockings herself. On the other hand, she was ready to prostrate herself in admiration of even the most trivial piece of embroidery or crochet-work. There was something in that....