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Time after time he would stop, and look thoughtfully about him with one hand in his pocket, and an occasionally ejaculated "H'm, h'm!" until they arrived at Mrs. Selvig's steps and green door, when he would suddenly declare that he had some "things" lying in there: he would be out again directly. Silla knew by experience what "directly" meant, and meanwhile went her own way over the yards.
The fact is, that it makes a great difference to a household whether it has the husband's work and weekly wages to subsist upon or not, and as a further aggravation of the situation, her dead husband's bill at Mrs. Selvig's thrust its extremely unexpected, unwelcome face into Mrs. Holman's room. Mrs.
Holman made his usual turn into Selvig's public-house every evening to brace himself for his return home. When the ale-bottle had been emptied, and a proper number of drams consumed, his at first hurried, restless look was stiffened into a dull, staring, fixed mask.
I'll show you how to get the sugar-loaf up, but you will have to eat it yourselves." The public-house the one at Mrs. Selvig's, with the green door and white window frames, farthest down the street had seen Holman's quiet, subdued, stooping figure come and go for many years.
As to Holman, experience had taught them that his fixed and staring eyes saw nothing: he sat mute and quiet the whole evening. In Mrs. Selvig's tap-room he found a remedy which made him insensible to moral lectures even the most reasonable and impressive.
She had not really spoken to him since early in the summer, when he got so angry because she wanted him to go into the smithy again. She went quickly down the street she was quite certain that it was he! She hurried on farther, down to the bridge; but it was the same as last time he was not to be seen. So she turned back again, disappointed, keeping constant watch on Mrs. Selvig's green door.
"Pooh, there's no hurry," and she leaned against the wall, and regaled herself "for you see," she mumbled, "father won't be out of Mrs. Selvig's yet a-while, and I'll say first of all that that has kept me: I can reckon at least half an hour for that. And then to mother I have the excuse that it's Saturday evening, and there were so many people in the shop that I could hardly get to the counter.
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