Ida Brandt Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, so it is. It gets her blood circulating.”
    They went in to have something to eat. “Oh,” said Mrs Lund (for nowhere were there so many beautiful things on a table as at the bailiff’s). “How wonderful it must be to be able to look after everything as you do, Mrs Brandt.”
    Things were rather all over the place at the forester’ s; eleven was a somewhat large number of heirs to see to.
    They exchanged news from the neighbourhood and talked about the sewing machine. Lund had been in to see how it worked.
    “You must go and have a look at that great work of art,” he said.
    “But surely it works by hand?” said Mrs Brandt.
    “Yes, but heaven knows how long it will last.”
    “You know, Lund,” said his wife with a faraway look in her eyes, “it must surely be lovely to have one of those in a home where there are so many to make clothes for.”
    Lund just laughed:
    “Aye, née Silferhjelm,” – the pharmacist’s wife had her distinguished maiden name placed below Mogensen on her cards – “could surely manage to sew the few skirts she needs by hand.”
    “But there are people,” said Mrs Brandt as she handed a dish around, “who must be the first to have things.”
    “And then when you haven’t anything else to think about,” said Mrs Lund, “it is quite reasonable.”
    Mrs Lund, who always spoke in a tone as though she were trying to quieten someone down, changed the subject to the price of butter:
    “Now Levy has reduced his price by four skillings .”
    Mrs Brandt failed to understand that, for she had maintained her price all the time.
    “Well,” said Mrs Lund, shaking her head – she had four small curls at the back, tied with a velvet ribbon – “but it is presumably because things do not always turn out like that for us at home… heaven knows how that happens.”
    “Let’s have a schnapps, Lund,” said Brandt who was doing little but look, first at one and then at the other. “Has Ida got anything to eat?”
    Ida was allowed to spread her butter herself with a blunt-edged knife. “You have to accustom children,” said her mother. “It is good for them.”
    “Cheers, Lund,” said the bailiff, and they went on to wonder when His Lordship could be expected. It would scarcely be before the end of June, in a couple of months.
    “When the woods are past their best,” said the forester.
    Ida was to go to bed after the meal. Her father put her on his knee when she said good night and bounced her up and down.
    “My, you do bounce that child around,” said Lund with a laugh, and Ida said good night to the others, one after the other in turn.
    The forester and his wife left at ten o’ clock.
    “Let me take your arm,” said Lund, for it was dark.
    “She’s a prickly one, you know,” he said. “She can’t forget we’ve known her as the housekeeper…and all that went with it.”
    “But they’ re very helpful, Lund,” she said.
    The forester said nothing to that. His only comment was: “She takes up a lot of space at the end of the table.”
    “And how nice everything is,” said his wife. She was always full of profound admiration when she was in other people’s homes.
    The Lunds made their way home.
    But Mrs Brandt went around putting away the silver.
    …Ida was to have a children’s party, and that must be now, before His Lordship came.

    The children had chocolate to drink on the Mound adjoining His Lordship’s garden.
    The girls sat in a row, all in starched dresses – with the two from the inn at the end of the table in tartan winter dresses and wearing earrings – all drinking and eating.
    Mrs Brandt, who was going around, wearing a white shawl and pouring out the cocoa, said:
    “I don’t think you have anything, have you Ingeborg?”
    Ingeborg was the judge’s only child and she was wearing net mittens decorated with small bows.
    Not a sound was to be heard.
    Ida, who was the smallest of them all, went around showing her dolls to those who were