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There they sat, the more ripely-developed youth of the town, in rows up in the rooms of the Veyergang firm's great factory, and minded the whirring shuttles, balls and rollers Swedish Lena, and Stina, and Kristofa, and Kalla, and Josefa and Gunda, and all the rest of them. Had any one asked them about their parents, they would now and then have been hard put to it for an answer.
She knew the delicate scent of his cigar, and had a feeling that his clothes creaked, as it were, when he moved a peculiarity which was connected with the romantic ideas of distinguished gentlemen that Kristofa had awakened in her. It was he, she was quite sure now, who had given them the tickets. Her heart beat and fluttered within her like a disturbed and frightened bird.
Kristofa was able to inform them that there was to be a violin and a clarionet, and that both students and ordinary people and ships' officers were to be there! Some strangers who were going over the factory came up the room, and stopped and questioned and examined. And the young workwomen sat each in her place, with head bent over her work, as if she had no thought for anything but her reels.
"Is that you, Nikolai?" exclaimed Silla, in surprise. "Have you seen anything of Kristofa and Kalla? I did so want to speak to them! Haven't you? Do you know how I got out? I was only going to get the cat in for the night. I chased it out myself, and hid it so nicely under the wooden tub out in the shed. If only it doesn't mew."
Oh, what a lovely red silk handkerchief in his breast-pocket!" whispered Kristofa to Silla. The row squeezed themselves up against the fence. The person in question came by humming carelessly, with his head held high and swinging his walking-stick. All the young girls stared respectfully and stupidly straight in front of them, though not without a glance out of the corner of their eye.
In this way she could live their life at second hand. It was of course Kristofa who knew how to put everything in a captivating, magic light.
Then Kristofa had related her wonderful adventure of last Sunday she was always passing through remarkable occurrences, most wonderfully interesting, if not true to quite a corresponding degree, in which fine ladies and gentlemen played the principal parts, and she chanced to be the initiated one.
She went about there with a suppressed longing and eager interest, her eyes sparkling, in the midst of all the chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened.
I and Kristofa and Kalla and Josefa have got the whole of the weeding and tidying up in the office garden, down all the peas and carrots, and cabbage-beds as well; and when it grows over in the autumn, we shall have that too." Nikolai only stood reckoning.
That she chattered so gaily did not please him, nor yet that whenever he made time to go up in the evening she came down breathless from the garden, and was always full of whether young Veyergang had been there or not, what he had said, and what she had thought, and whether Kristofa had afterwards agreed or disagreed with her. It was as if she could not talk of anything else!
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