first marriage."

"Yes, I have noticed you use foreign words now and again."

"It's all from those days with Maggie. Oh, you should have heard her say: 'I love you, darling.' Lord save us, what a lovely creature she was! I declare I love England myself now, all for Maggie's sake."

"And your son, the engineer, she was his mother?"

"Yes, to be sure. Poor Maggie, it cost her life, that little bit of business."

"And your second wife?"

"She was a Widow Gronlund from Arendal. Ah, that was a queer story. There I was, you see, with little William, Maggie's boy, sorrowful and downcast as a wet umbrella. Of course you'd understand I'd no wish really to go and get married again all at once; I wrote to Skipper Gronlund of Arendal—he was a cousin of mine—and asked if he and his wife would take the boy and look after him. They were willing enough, the more by reason they'd only one child of their own Little Marie, a girl of the same age."

"So they took the boy?"

"Yes. He was there for four years, and then I began to feel the want of him and went up to Arendal to see him. But what do you think happened then? Just as I got to Arendal there came a wire saying Gronlund's ship had gone to the bottom, and that was the end of Gronlund!"

"And then you married her?"

"Exactly. What else could I do? Amalie, Mrs. Gronlund that is, wouldn't give up the boy, and I couldn't tear him away by force, could I? Very well, I said, what must be must, man is but dust, and so we got married."

"Mrs. Gronlund was not altogether young, I suppose?"

"Nothing much to look at, more's the pity, but an excellent housekeeper and a good-hearted soul."

"And so it turned out happily after all?"

"Ay, that it did, but it didn't last long, worse luck. Amalie still kept longing for her Gronlund, and she got kidney disease and went off to join him—and there I was left once again all on my own, and this time with Maggie's boy and Amalie's girl."

"But you were glad to have the children, surely?"

"Well, yes, at times. But I can't help calling to mind the words of the prophet, Children are a blessing of the Lord, but a trial and a tribulation to man. It's true, it's true.... Well, William was going in for engineering, you see, and he was away in Germany at his studies—studying how to spend money, as far as I could see, with a crowd of mighty intelligent artist people he'd got in with. And what do you suppose he's doing now?"

Betty was working at her books again, writing away with all her might in the big ledger, while Holm went on with his story.

"He wants to be a painter—an artist, you'd say, and daubs away great slabs of picture stuff as big as this floor—but Lord save and help us, I wouldn't have the messy things hung up here. I told him he'd much better go into the shop and get an honest living in a decent fashion like his father before him—but no! Too common, if you please, too materialistic. And that's bad enough, but there's worse to it yet. Would you believe it, Miss Betty, he and those artist friends of his have turned Marie's head the same wry fashion, and make her believe she's cut out for an artistic career herself—a born opera singer, they say; and now she carols away up there till people think there's a dentist in the house. Oh, it's the deuce of a mess, I do assure you!"

Betty looked up from her book. "You must have the gift of good humour, Mr. Holm."

"Well, I hope so, I'm sure. Shouldn't like to be one of your doleful sort."

"A kind and hard-working man you've always been, I'm sure. A perfect model of a man."

"Perfect model—me? Lord preserve us, I wouldn't be that for worlds. Can't imagine anything more uninteresting than the perfect model type. No—I've just tried all along to be an ordinary decent man, that finds life one of the best things going. And when things happened to turn particularly nasty—no money, no credit, and that sort of thing—why, I'd just say to myself, 'Come along, my lad, only get to grips with it, and you'll pull through all right.' And then I could always console myself with the thought that when things were looking black, they couldn't get much blacker, so they'd have to brighten up before long."

"Yes, it takes sorrows as well as joys to make a life."

"That's true. But we make them both for ourselves mostly. If you only knew what fun I've got out of life at times; have to hammer out a bit of something lively now and then, you know! Look at us now, for instance, just sitting here talking. Isn't that heaps better than sitting solemnly like two mummies on their blessed pyramids?" And he swung round on his high stool till the screw creaked again.

"Yes, indeed, it's very nice, I'm sure." Betty began putting her books away, Holm walking up and down meanwhile with short, rapid steps. Upstairs, someone was singing to the piano.

"Nice sort of evening we're going to have, by the look of things. House full of blessed amateurs with fiddles and tambourines. Serve them right if they were packed off to a reformatory, the whole——"

"Oh, but surely, Mr. Holm, you needn't be so hard on them. Young people must have a little entertainment now and then—especially when they've a father who can afford it," she added a little wistfully.

"Afford it—h'm. As to that ... if they keep on the way they're going now, I'm not sure I shan't have to give them a bit of a lesson...." He crossed over to the desk, and, spreading out his elbows, looked quizzically at Betty.

"What do you think now—is Knut G. Holm too old to marry again?"

"Really, I'm sure I couldn't say," answered the girl, with a merry laugh. And, slipping past him, she took her jacket and hat.

"Good-night, Mr. Holm."

"Good-night, Miss Betty. I hope I haven't kept you too long with all my talk, but it's such a comfort to feel that there's one place in the house where there's somebody sensible to talk to."

He stood for some time looking after her.

"Not bad—not bad at all. Nice figure—trifle over slender in the upper works, perhaps; looks a bit worried at times; finds it hard to make ends meet, perhaps, poor thing. H'm. But she's a good worker, and that's a fact. Yes, I think this arrangement was a good idea."

Garner came in with the cash-box. "We've shut up outside, Mr. Holm. Was there anything more you wanted this evening?"

"No—no thanks. H'm, I say, that row and goings on upstairs, can you hear it out in the shop?"

"About the same as in here. But it's really beautiful music, Mr. Holm. I slipped out into the passage upstairs a little while back, and they were singing a quartette, but Miss Marie was taking the bass, and going so hard I'm sure they could hear her right up at the fire station."

"I've no doubt they could, Garner. But I'll give them music of another sort, and then—we'll see!" He flung the cash-box into the safe with a clang, and Garner judged it best to disappear without delay.

Outside in the shop he confided to Clasen that the old man was in a roaring paddy about the music upstairs; and the pair of them fell to speculating as to what would happen when he came up.

"Oh, nothing," said Clasen. "Those youngsters they always manage to get round him in the end."

"Might get sick of the whole business and give up the shop—or make it over to us, what?" added Garner, "as his successors," and he waxed enthusiastic over the idea as they strolled along to Syversen's Hotel for a little extra in the way of supper.

Holm was walking up and down by himself in the office, while the music upstairs went on, until the globe on the safe rattled with the sound. He was in a thoroughly bad temper for once. "There!