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Updated: May 6, 2025
"No, on the contrary; she is a nice girl, but still not the one for you. You shall have a woman like Elizabeth Westling. Be sensible, Maurits; what will become of you if you break off your studies and go into trade for that child's sake. You are not suited to it, my boy.
Now she needs all her courage, for Maurits is angry in earnest. "Hold your tongue!" he hisses at her, and then roars to make himself heard by Uncle Theodore, who is sitting at his desk and counting notes. "What is the matter with you? The shares give no interest now; I have told Uncle that; but Uncle knows as well as I that they will pay.
And heedless! the burgomaster had sent by Maurits some shares in an undertaking that was not prosperous; but Uncle would buy them of him, Maurits had said. Uncle did not care where he threw his money away. He had stood in town in the market-place and tossed silver to the street boys.
The little face grows paler and smaller, but Maurits only stiffens and swells. There is not much chance of Anne-Marie's turning his uncle's head as she did his. His uncle is quite a different kind of man. His taste well, Maurits does not think much of his taste but he thinks that it would be something loud-voiced, something flashing and red which would strike Uncle.
Think how happy any one would be to be mistress of such an estate!" "How would it be then with Maurits's inheritance?" uncle had asked quite softly. Then she had been silent for a long while, for she could not say to Uncle that she and Maurits did not ask for the inheritance, for that was just what they did do. She wondered if it was very ugly for them to do so.
He did not ask Downie, neither would she have been able to answer. The old lady knew the story well, but he told it just the same. Then Anne-Marie remembered that Maurits had laughed at his uncle because in all his house he only had two books, and those were Afzelius' "Fairy Tales" and Nösselt's "Popular Stories for Ladies." "But those he knows," Maurits had said.
He could not know that she was so shy, nor that she had almost fainted when she had found him gone and herself left alone with uncle and the old lady. Maurits had never been shy. He did not know what torture it is. That breakfast, that breakfast! Uncle had as a beginning asked the old lady if she had heard the story of Sigrid the beautiful.
She had been a delicate child, and her parents had watched over her on account of it, and let her do nothing. It was only as play that she was allowed to help in the baking and in the shop. Somehow she came to tell him that her father called her Downie. She had also said: "Everybody spoils me at home except Maurits, and that is why I like him so much. He is so sensible with me!
How Maurits would laugh at his old uncle when he stepped forward and explained that! And what would be the good of it? Would he frighten her, so that he would not even be allowed to help them in the future? But how will it go now when she approaches to say good-bye to him? He almost screams to her to take care, to keep three paces away from him.
But it was the best proof that she had really enjoyed herself when she had not even noticed that she had been a little neglected. She had so much enjoyed looking at Maurits. Just because she had been a little bit severe to him at breakfast and laughed at him yesterday, it was such a pleasure to her to see him at the ball. He had never seemed to her so handsome and so superior.
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