I

The stationmaster put on his uniform coat to be ready for the train.

“There’s no damn time for anything,” he said, stretching his arms. He had been dozing over the accounts.

He lit a cigar stub and went out onto the platform. Now, as he walked up and down, erect in his uniform and with his hands in both his jacket pockets, there was still something of the lieutenant about him. And it could be seen in his legs, too, which were still bent in the way they had been in the cavalry.

Five or six farm lads had arrived and were standing (legs akimbo) in a group opposite the station building; the station porter dragged the freight out, a single green-painted chest that looked as though it had been dropped by the side of the road.

The parson’s daughter, tall as an officer in the guards, flung the platform gate open and entered.

The stationmaster clicked his heels and saluted.

“And what does madam intend to do today?” he said. When he was “on the platform”, the stationmaster conversed in the tone he used to employ in the club balls at Næstved in his old cavalry days.

“Walk,” said the parson’s daughter. She made some curious flapping gestures as she spoke, as though she intended to hit whoever she was addressing.

“By the way, Miss Abel is coming home.”

“Already – from town?”

“Ye-es.”

“Nothing in the offing yet?” The stationmaster extended the fingers on his right hand in the air, and the parson’s daughter laughed.

“Here come the family,” she said. “I made my excuses and ran away from them…”

The stationmaster paid his respects to the Abel family, the widowed Mrs Abel and her elder daughter Louise. They were accompanied by Miss Jensen. Mrs Abel looked resigned.

“Yes,” she said, “I have come to meet my younger daughter Ida.”

Mrs Abel took it in turns to fetch her Louise and her younger daughter Ida. Louise in the spring and her younger daughter Ida in the autumn.

They each spent six weeks with an aunt in Copenhagen. “My sister, the one who was married to a State Councillor,” said Mrs Abel. The State Councillor’s widow resided in a fourth floor apartment and made a living by decorating terracotta ornaments with paintings of storks standing on one leg. Mrs Abel always dispatched her daughters with many good wishes.

She had now been dispatching them for ten years.

“And such letters we have received from my younger daughter this time.”

“Aye, those letters,” said Miss Jensen.

“But it is better to have your chicks at home,” said Mrs Abel, looking tenderly at Louise. Mrs Abel had to dry her eyes at the thought.

The six months they were at home, Mrs Abel’s chicks spent quarrelling and sewing fresh trimmings on old dresses. They never spoke to their mother.

“How could one possibly live in an out-of-the-way place like this if one did not have a family life?” said the widow.

Miss Jensen nodded.

There came the sound of barking from the corner over by the inn, and a coach appeared.

“That’s the Kiærs,” said the parson’s daughter. “What can they want?”

She went across the platform to the gate.

“Aye,” Kiær, the gentleman farmer, got out of his carriage. “You might well ask. Now Madsen’s gone and caught typhoid just at the worst possible time, so I’ve had to wire for a replacement and God knows what kind of rubbish I’m going to get. He’s due here now.”

Mr Kiær came onto the platform.

“He’s been to the Royal College of Agriculture, if that means anything, and he got top marks there as well. Oh, good morning, Bai.” The station master was allowed to shake hands. “You look a bit bleary-eyed. How’s the wife?”

“Fine, thank you. So you’re here to fetch a new bailiff.”

“Aye, dreadful story, and just at the worst possible time.”

“Oh a new man in the district,” says the parson’s daughter waving her arms about as though she was already giving him a box on the ears. “With Wee Bentzen the porter that means six and a half.”

The widow was suddenly all of a flutter. She had said it at home: her elder daughter Louise was not to go out wearing those prunella boots.

Her feet were the source of her elder daughter Louise’s beauty: slender, aristocratic feet.

And she had told her.

Miss Louise was in the waiting room adjusting her veil. The young Abels went in for low-cut dresses with ruffs, jet beads and veils.

Bai went indoors to the kitchen to tell his wife about the bailiff. The parson’s daughter sat swinging her legs on the green-painted chest. She took out her watch and checked the time. “Good heavens, that man’s certainly making us wait,” she said.

Miss Jensen said, “Yes, the train seems to be an appreciable number of minutes late.” Miss Jensen spoke indescribably correctly, especially when talking to the parson’s daughter.

She did not approve of the parson’s daughter.

“That is not the tone to be used by my pupils,” she said to the widow. Miss Jensen was not entirely sure in her use of foreign words.

“But there we have our lovely lady.” The parson’s daughter bounced up from the chest and rushed across the platform towards Mrs Bai, who had appeared on the stone steps. When the parson’s daughter gave someone a hearty greeting, it looked as though she was about to commit a violent assault.

Mrs Bai smiled quietly and allowed herself to be kissed.

“Heaven help us,” said the parson’s daughter, “we’re unexpectedly going to have a new cock on the midden. Here he comes!”

They heard the sound of the train in the distance and the loud clattering as it crossed the bridge over the river. Swaying and puffing, it made its slow approach across the meadow.

The parson’s daughter remained on the steps, holding Mrs Bai around the waist.

“That’s Ida Abel,” said the parson’s daughter. “I know her by her veil.” A Bordeaux-coloured veil emerged from a window.

The train stopped, and doors were opened and closed. Mrs Abel shouted her “Hello” in such a loud voice that the occupants of all the nearby compartments came to the windows.

The younger daughter Ida squeezed her mother’s arm angrily; she was still standing on the step:

“There’s a gentleman on the train – coming here.”

“Who is he?” Everything was going nineteen to the dozen.

Ida was down on the platform. There was the gentleman, a very staid-looking, fair-haired gentleman with a beard who was taking a hat box and cases out of a smoking compartment.

“And Auntie, Auntie Mi,” shouted the widow.

“Shush,” said her younger daughter Ida in a quiet but irate voice. “Where’s Louise?”

Louise turned and sprang like a child up the stone steps in front of Mrs Bai and the parson’s daughter, as though her “beauty” resided in her button boots.

At the bottom of the steps, the bailiff made himself known to Mr Kiær.

“Aye, the devil of a story. There’s Madsen in bed, at the very worst time. Ah well, we’ll hope for the best.” Mr Kiær slapped the new bailiff on the shoulder.

“Heaven preserve us,” said the parson’s daughter. “A very ordinary domestic animal.”

The green-painted box was in the train and the cans for the cooperative dairy had been hoisted onto the goods wagon. The train was just starting to move when a farmer shouted out of a window: he had no ticket.

The guard, a smart young man as straight as a hussar briefly touched hands with Bai and jumped up onto the running board.

The farmer continued to shout and argue with the guard, who was still hanging on to the running board.

And for a moment all faces on the platform turned towards the train as it rumbled away.

“Hmm, and that was that,” said the parson’s daughter. She went into the entrance hall with Mrs Bai.

“My bailiff, Mr. Huus,” said Mr Kiær in the direction of Bai as he was about to walk past. The three stood there for a moment.

Louise and young Ida finally found each other and started kissing madly in the doorway.

“Oh, good heavens,” said the widow, “they haven’t seen each other for six weeks.”

“You are fortunate, Mr Huus,” said Bai in his club-ball voice. “You can make the acquaintance of the ladies of this place without further ado. Ladies, may I introduce you?”

The Misses Abel interrupted their kissing as though on command.

“The Misses Abel,” said Mr Bai. “Mr Huus.”

“Yes, I have just come to meet my younger daughter – from Copenhagen,” said the widow out of the blue.

“Mrs Abel,” said Mr Bai.

Mr Huus bowed.

“Miss Linde” (This was the parson’s daughter.) “Mr Huus.”

The parson’s daughter inclined her head.

“And my wife,” said Bai.

Mr Huus said a few words, and then they all went in to fetch their luggage.

Farmer Kiær drove off with the bailiff. The others walked. When they reached the road, they discovered they had forgotten Miss Jensen.

She still stood on the platform, dreaming away, leaning against a signal post.

“Miss Jensen,” the parson’s daughter yelled from the road.

Miss Jensen started. Miss Jensen always came over melancholy when she saw a railway. She could not abide to see “anything leaving”.

“Seems to be a really nice person,” said Mrs Abel as they walked along the road.

“Very ordinary bailiff,” said the parson’s daughter; she was walking arm in arm with Mrs Bai. “He had nice hands.”

The two chicks tailed along at the end of the group, bickering.

“I must say, Miss Jensen, you are in a hurry,” said the parson’s daughter. Miss Jensen was far ahead of them, jumping the puddles like a goat. She was making a considerable show of her maidenly legs on account of the autumnal humidity.

They walked by the tiny woodland. At the turn of the road, Mrs Bai said goodbye.

“Oh, you look so tiny and natty in that big shawl. What a lovely lady!” said the parson’s daughter, reaching out as though to embrace her.

“Goodbye.”

“Goo-oo-d bye”

“She’ll never be out of breath with the amount she says,” said young Ida.

The parson’s daughter whistled.

“Oh, there’s the curate,” said Mrs Abel. “Good evening, curate. Good evening.”

The curate raised his hat. “I had to say good evening to Ida as she returned home,” he said.

“Well, Miss Abel. Are you in good health?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Miss Abel.

“And you have received a competitor, curate,” said Mrs Abel.

“Oh? Where?”

“Kiær was fetching his new bailiff. A very attractive person. Wasn’t he, Miss Linde?”

“Oh yes.”

“First rate, Miss Linde?”

“Top hole,” said the parson’s daughter.

The parson’s daughter and the curate always spoke in a kind of jargon when they were together with others, and they never uttered a word of sense. They laughed at their own foolishness until they were almost fit to burst.

The parson’s daughter no longer went to church when the curate was preaching since one Sunday when she had almost made him laugh as he was standing in the pulpit reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

“Miss Jensen rushed off as though she had rockets in a certain part of her anatomy,” said the curate.

Miss Jensen was still ahead of them.

“Oh, Andersen,” Miss Linde laughed heartily, “now you sound like Holberg.”

They reached the parsonage, which was the first house in the village, and the parson’s daughter and the curate took leave of the others at the garden gate.

“Goodbye, Miss Jensen,” shouted Miss Linde down the road. Miss Jensen answered her with a squeak.

“What was he like?” said the curate when in the garden. His tone was quite different now.

“Oh, good heavens,” said Miss Linde, “a very ordinary farmer.”

Silently, they walked side by side down through the garden.

“Hmm,” said Miss Ida. The Abel family caught up with Miss Jensen, who was standing waiting for them on some dry ground, “I am sure he had come to say good morning to me.”

They walked on a little. Then Miss Jensen said:

“There are so many different kinds of people.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Abel.

“I am not happy when I am together with that family,” said Miss Jensen. “I prefer to avoid them.”

Miss Jensen had “avoided them” for a week since the vicar had said all those things.

“Mrs Abel,” said Miss Jensen, “who pays any heed to an unmarried lady? I said so to the vicar: ‘Vicar,’ I said, ‘you are interested in the Free School, so parents send their children to the Free School.’ And what was his answer to me, Mrs Abel? ‘I will not discuss the question of scholarships with Mr Linde any more. The parish council has removed half the scholarship money from my institute (Miss Jensen put the stress on the final syllable), but I will continue to do my duty even if they take the other half as well. I will not discuss the scholarship question with Mr Linde any further.’ ”

The three ladies turned into the little road leading up to the “hall”, an old building with two wings.

Mrs Abel lived in the wing on the right, and Miss Jensen’s institute was in that on the left.

“How nice to have them both with me again,” said the widow. They took leave of each other in the courtyard.

“Ugh,” said young Ida once they were inside the door, “you two looked such a mess at the station, I was ashamed of you.”

“I wonder how you expect me to look,” said Louise as she took off her veil before the looking glass, “when you have all the clothes.”

The widow put on some slippers. The soles of her boots were worn out.

Miss Jensen finally extracted the key from her pocket and let herself in. In the sitting room, the pug gave a couple of irritated yelps at its mistress and remained in its basket.

Miss Jensen took off her outdoor clothes and sat down in a corner and wept.

She wept every time she was alone since Mr Linde had said those words.

“You are interested in the school, vicar,” she had said, “and so the parents send their children to the Free School.”

“Let me tell you, Miss Jensen, why the parents send their children to the Free School: it is because Miss Sørensen knows her job well,” the minister had said.

The innkeeper’s wife was the only person to whom Miss Jensen had confided “the words”:

“And what is an unmarried lady to do, Mrs Madsen?” she had said. “Tears are the only defence a woman has.”

Miss Jensen sat weeping in her corner. Darkness began to fall, and finally she rose and went out into the kitchen.

She lit a small paraffin cooking stove and put some water on for tea. She laid a cloth across one corner of the kitchen table and arranged some bread and butter in front of the solitary plate.

But while she was doing this, she was lost in thought, pondering again on the vicar’s words.

The pug had gone out with her and placed itself on a cushion in front of its empty dish.

Miss Jensen took the dish and filled it with white bread that had been softened in the warm water.

The pug had the dish placed before it and started eating the food almost without moving.

Miss Jensen had lit a solitary candle. She drank her tea with an open rye bread sandwich, using her knife to cut the bread into delicate little squares.

When she had drunk her tea, Miss Jensen went to bed. She carried the pug in her arms and put it down on the duvet at the foot of the bed. Then she fetched the school register and laid it on the table at the bedside.

She locked the door and looked in all the corners and under the bed by the light of her candle.

Then she undressed, combed out her plaits and hung them up on the mirror.

The pug was already asleep, snoring on the duvet.

Miss Jensen did not sleep well since Mr Linde had said those words.

Mrs Bai went back along the road towards the station. She opened the gate and went on to the platform. It was quite empty, so silent that you could hear the humming of the two telegraph wires.

With her hands on her lap, Mrs Bai sat down on the bench outside the door and looked out across the fields. Mrs Bai was much inclined to sit in this way wherever there was a chair or a bench or a flight of steps.

She looked out across the fields, the great stretches of ploughed land and the meadows beyond. The sky was clear and pale blue. There was nothing for the eyes to rest upon with ease, other than the chapel, you could see that with its stepped gables and the tower right over on the other side of the flat field.

Mrs Bai felt cold and got up. She went across to the garden hedge, looked in over it, opened the gate and entered. The garden was a triangular strip along the railway; there was a kitchen garden at the front, and behind this there was a lawn with some tall roses in front of the summer house beneath the elder bush.

She examined the roses; there were a few buds on them still. They had flowered faithfully all through the year.

But now they would soon have to be covered.

The leaves were falling already. But there was no protection for anything, of course.

Mrs Bai went out of the garden again and along the platform into the little courtyard behind the wooden fencing. She called for the maid and told her she wanted to feed the pigeons.

She received the corn in an earthenware bowl and started to call the pigeons and scatter the corn out across the stones.

She was very fond of pigeons. She had been ever since she was a child.

There had been such a lot of them at home in the big merchant’s house in the town. Oh how they used to flock around the dovecote just opposite the door leading into the workshop.

It was as though she could hear the cooing and murmuring merely by thinking of the courtyard at home.

That was the old house, for later, when her father died, they sold the old workshop and everything else, and moved away.

The pigeons flew down around Mrs Bai, picking at the corn.

“Marie,” said Mrs Bai, “just come and see how bad-tempered the speckled one is.”

Marie appeared in the kitchen door and discussed the pigeons. Mrs Bai emptied out the rest of the bowl. “Some of them are going to meet their fate when Bai’s friends come to play Hombre.”

She went up the steps. “It gets dark so early now,” she said and went inside.

The living room was rather dark and felt warm as she came in from outside. Mrs Bai sat down at the piano and played a tune.

She never played except when it was growing dark, always the same three or four melodies, sentimental little things that she played languorously and slowly, all in the same manner so they all assumed the same quality.

As she sat there playing the piano in the dark sitting room, Mrs Bai almost always thought of her home. They had been a big family, and there had always been such a variety of things at home.

She was the youngest of them all. While her father was still alive, she was so small that she could hardly even reach her plate at dinner.

Her father would sit on the sofa in his shirt sleeves, and the children would stand around the table and help themselves.

“Straighten your backs, children,” her father would say.

He himself would sit with his broad back slumped forward and his arms right across the table.

Her mother went to and fro, fetching and bringing.

The lads from the workshop all ate out in the kitchen, seated at the long table.

They giggled and argued so noisily that it could be heard through the door, and they suddenly made such a row that it sounded as though the house was about to collapse.

“What’s all that din about?” her father shouted, banging the table in the living room.

They fell quite silent out in the kitchen. There was only a gentle scraping sound from one who was searching for something under the table after the kerfuffle.

“Dreadful crowd,” said her father.

After lunch he slept for an hour on the sofa. He woke on the dot:

“Now I have given some serious thought to the country’s best interests,” he said, being given a cup of coffee before returning to the workshop.

Everything changed when her father died. Katinka was sent to the school along with Consul Lasson’s children and the mayor’s daughter Fanny.

And she was also invited to the consul’s.

The other siblings were dispersed. She was left alone with her mother.

Those years were the best in Katinka’s life, there in the little town where she knew everyone and everyone knew her. In the afternoons, she and her mother would sit in the drawing room, each at a window, her mother by the one with the “mirror”; Katinka would do French embroidery or read.

The sun fell in bright stripes through the flowers in the windows, out across the white floor.

Katinka read a great number of novels from the public library, novels about people of aristocratic birth, but she also read poems that she copied into an album.

“Tinka,” said her mother. “Here comes Ida Levy. Oh, she’s wearing her yellow hat.”

Tinka looked up: “She’s going for her music lesson,” she said.

Ida Levy went past, and they looked at her and she nodded to them and asked with her fingers whether they were coming to meet the “half past nine”.

“Oh, it’s dreadful the way Ida Levy wears her heels down,” said Tinka as she watched her.

“She gets that from her mother,” said mother.

They go past, one by one, the land agent and the two lieutenants, the director and the doctor. And they wave to them, and upstairs they nod and exchange a few words about each of them.

They know where everyone is going and what they are going to do.

They know every costume and every flower on every hat. And every day they make the same comments about the same things.

Minna Helms passes and nods.

“Did you see Minna Helms?” says mother.

“Yes.” And Katinka looks at her and screws up her eyes against the sun.

“She could do with a new coat,” she says.

“Poor things, where are they going to get one from?” Her mother looks in the mirror: “Aye, it looks pretty worn,” she says. “I think she could sew some new edging on it though. But it’s probably as Mrs Noes says: Mrs Helms doesn’t have much, and she isn’t much bothered.”

“If only that clerk of hers would pull himself together and do something about it,” said Tinka.

Five o’clock came, and the young girls would call for each other to go for a walk, and arm in arm they would walk up and down the street, meeting and gathering in groups and laughing and chatting and going their way.

In the evenings, after tea, the mothers would come along as well to meet the half-past-nine train, and things were much quieter as they walked out along the station road.

“Katinka,” said her mother, turning round – she was walking in front with Mrs Levy – “There’s Mr Bai. So he must have the evening off.”

Mr Bai passed by and greeted them. And Katinka nodded and blushed. For her friends were always teasing her about Mr Bai.

“So he is off to play skittles,” said Mrs Levy.

On Sundays they went to church. Everyone wore their best clothes, and their singing resounded beneath the vaulted roof while the sun entered through the big chancel windows.

Thora Berg was such a naughty one to sit beside in church.

She sat there all the time the parson was in the pulpit, saying, “Well, my dear” and pinching her arm.

Aye, Thora Berg was quite a tomboy.

In the evening, soil and pebbles rained down against Tinka’s windows.

And they heard noise and laughter all the way down the street.

“That’s Thora going home from a party,” said Tinka. “They’ve been at the mayor’s.”

Thora set off home along the street as if on a wild hunt, pursued by all the young gentlemen. The entire town was permitted to hear it when Thora Berg went home from a party.

Katinka liked Thora Berg most of all. She admired her and watched her attentively when they were together. At home, she would say “Thora said that” twenty times a day.

They did not actually spend a great deal of time in each other’s company. But in the afternoons, when they were taking a walk, or out at the pavilion, where they had season tickets for the concerts the military band gave every other Wednesday, then they talked together. Tinka always became quite flushed when they met.

It was also at the pavilion she had first made the acquaintance of Bai. And on that very first evening he had danced most with her.

And when they were out skating, he always invited her to skate with him. It was as though they were flying, almost as though he was carrying her. And he also visited them at home.

All her friends teased her, and she always had him as a partner when they were playing party games or had guessing games. It was always Bai, and everyone laughed.

And mother was always talking about him at home.

Then came the engagement, and she always had someone to go with to church on Sundays; and in the winter, when there was a play on, to the theatre. And when Bai got his position there was that busy time with her trousseau and arranging the house and all that. Her friends helped her with all the names that had to be sewn and all the things that had to be hemmed.

They were summer days, and they all sat up in the summerhouse. The sewing machine whirred, making hems and fixing ends.

And they would tease her and laugh and suddenly bounce up and fly out into the garden, running around the lawn and making a noise and laughing, as wild as a group of foals.

Tinka was the quietest of them.

There was whispering with friends in every corner and sewing get-togethers at the Levys, where they sewed the rug that Tinka was to stand on as a bride before the altar, and there were the rehearsals for the hymns they were to sing in the choir.

Then came the day, and the wedding in the decorated church. It was quite full, even crowded. All the girls were up by the organ. Tinka nodded to them and thanked them and wept again. She had shed tears all the time as though a tap had been turned on.

And then they moved over here, to the silence.

At the beginning of her marriage, Tinka was frightened and always on edge, as though scared of being attacked.

There was so much she had not imagined, and Bai was so rough in many things that she simply suffered and put up with it, frightened and insecure as she was.

And she was also a stranger here and knew no one.

Then came a time when she became more acquiescent, more indolent and clingy, as was her nature.

She would sit with her crocheting in her husband’s office, looking at him as he sat bent over his desk, her curly hair falling a little down over her forehead.

She would rise and go across to him and put her arm round his neck, wanting to stand close to him, silent, to be close to him like this for a long time.

“I’m trying to write, you know, dear,” Bai would say.

She would bend her neck down to his mouth and he would kiss it.

“Can I get on with my writing now,” he would say, kissing her once more.

“You’re always writing,” she would say.

The years passed. Katinka adapted to life with the trains coming and going and the local people who went away and returned home; they brought news and they asked for news.

They established a social circle with such people as there were in the area. Mainly Bai’s Hombre friends, accompanied every other time by their wives.

Then there was the dog and the pigeons and the garden. And Mrs Bai was not actually one of the most efficient of people. She rarely had time on her hands as she lingered for a long time over everything she did. Bai called her “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

There were no children.

When Katinka’s mother died, they received her inheritance. As a couple on whom no calls were made they were well off and had everything in plenty.

Bai liked to eat well, and he ordered an abundance of good wine from Aalborg. He put on a little weight, living a life of some indolence and leaving his assistant to do most of the work. He only looked the “lieutenant” when he was outdoors.

He had a child up in town.

“What the hell,” he said to Kiær, who was a bachelor, “I used to be in the cavalry and the girl was as sweet as a baby sparrow.”

The girl went to Aalborg after the damage was done. The child was fostered in the village.

And so time passed.

Katinka no longer read as she used to do as a girl. Books were just made up stories, after all.

Mrs Bai had in her escritoire a large cardboard box containing a host of withered flowers, ribbons, and bits and pieces of gauze adorned with gold lettering. They were her old mementoes from the cotillions in the club and the last dances in the pavilion balls.

She would often take all this out during the winter evenings and rearrange it and try to remember who had given her this and who that.

She worked it all out and she wrote the gentleman’s name on the back of each cotillion card.

Bai sat at the table drinking his toddy.

“All that old rubbish,” he said.

“Leave it alone, Bai,” she would say, “Now I’ve just arranged it.”

And she continued to write her gentlemen’s names.

Occasionally, she would take out her album and read the verses she had copied into it in those days.

Her bridal veil and the withered myrtle wreath were kept in the top drawer below the silver cupboard in the escritoire.

She took that out as well and smoothed it down and put it together again.

And she would sit for half an hour over the open drawer and do nothing at all, as was her wont.

Occasionally she would simply smooth the veil out with her hands.

That bridal veil had started to turn quite yellow.

But time was passing as well. It was already ten years ago.

Aye – she would soon be an old woman. She was thirty-two now.

The Bais were well liked in the district. Known as kind and hospitable people who were quick to put on the coffee pot when any of their acquaintances came to the station.

Bai was a hospitable man, and he had everything under control in the station despite his not being particular about his dress.

His wife was rather quiet, but it was always good to see her kind face. She looked just like a young girl when sitting among the other ladies at the big Hombre evenings.

“But they ought to have a couple of children,” said Mrs Linde as she walked home with the vicar from the Bais. “Well-to-do people, they can afford it. It is a great pity that they should be there on their own.”

“God gives life according to His will, my dear,” said the vicar.

“Yes, God’s will be done,” said his wife.

The vicar and his wife had had ten children.

God had taken seven of them into His care when small. The old vicar remembered the seven every time there were children to be buried in the parish.

Mrs Bai had stopped playing the piano. She sat thinking that she really ought to get up and light the lamp. But then she called the maid and told her to light it and remained seated.

Marie came in with the lamp. She put a cloth on the table and laid it for tea.

“What time is it?” asked Mrs Bai.

“The eight o’clock train is signalled,” said Marie.

“I hadn’t heard that.”

Mrs Bai put on a coat and went out: “Is the train here?” she asked at the office.

“It’ll be here in a moment,” said Bai. He was standing by the telegraph desk.

“Is there a telegram?”

“Yes.”

“Who for?”

“Oh, up in town.”

“That means Ane will have to be off.”

Mrs Bai went out onto the platform. She was so fond of seeing the trains come and go in the dark.

The sound, at first far away, and then the rumbling as the train went over the bridge across the river and the great light at the head of it and finally the heavy swaying bulk emerging from the dark. It twisted its way forward and turned into distinct carriages that drew to a halt before her with guards, lighted post wagons and compartments.

Then, when it had gone again and the rumbling had died away, all was silent, as though twice as quiet.

The porter turned out the lights, first the one on the platform and then the one above the door.

There was no light apart from what came through the two windows, two narrow bridges of light in the vast darkness.

Mrs Bai went indoors.

They had a cup of tea, and then Bai read the papers, accompanying them with a toddy or two. He only read the government press. He personally took the Nationaltidende and then he read Kiær’s Dagblad, which he took out of the mail bag.

He thumped the table, making the toddy glass chink when the opposition was given “a real kick in the teeth”. And he would occasionally read the odd sentence aloud and laugh.

Mrs Bai listened and said nothing; she was not interested in politics. Besides that, she was going through a period of feeling terribly sleepy in the evenings.

“I suppose it’s about time,” said Bai.

He rose and lit a lantern. He did his round to make sure that everything was shut and the track was in order for the night train.

“You can go to bed, Marie,” said Mrs Bai in the direction of the kitchen. She woke Marie, who was sitting asleep on the wooden chair.

“Good night, ma’am,” she said drowsily.

“Good night.”

Mrs Bai moved the flowers in the living room away from the window ledge and put them down on the floor, where they spent the night standing in a row.

Bai returned.

“It’s getting cold at night,” he said.

“I was thinking of that for the roses. I was seeing to them today.”

“Aye,” he said, “they’ll have to be covered over now.”

Bai started to undress in the bedroom. The door was open.

He was very fond of going to and fro in the evening. From the bedroom to the sitting room in a state of near undress.

“She does lumber about,” he said. Marie was treading hard on the floor up in the attic.

Mrs Bai placed white sheets on the furniture and locked the office door.

“Can I put the light out?” she said.

And she extinguished the lamp.

She went into the bedroom, sat down before the mirror and loosened her hair.

Bai, in his underpants, asked for a pair of scissors.

“You’re losing a hell of a lot of weight,” he said.

Katinka pulled the dressing gown around her.

Bai got into bed and lay there talking. She replied as always in her own quiet way. There was always a quite brief pause before the words came out.

They had been silent for a while.

“Hmm, quite a nice person, don’t you think?”

“Yes, judging by his looks.”

“What did Agnes Linde say?”

“She said he looked quite nice, too.”

“Hmm, the things that girl says!”

“And God knows what kind of a hand he plays at Hombre.”

It was not long before Bai was asleep.

When he was asleep, Bai breathed heavily through his nose.

Mrs Bai was used to that now.

She remained sitting in front of the mirror. She took off her dressing gown and looked at her neck.

Yes, she had really become very thin.

It was since she had had that cough in the spring.

Mrs Bai put out the lights and lay down in bed beside Mr Bai.