You cannot understand it.
You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father
was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I
daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because
mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the
things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now
either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee
lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into
the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her
on my arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in
her black gowns with the many wide laces. . . ."
He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little
uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested,
that they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.
"Tell me," said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased
a little. "Do you often go to town?"
"I have never been there."
"Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?"
"I don't always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my
mother's death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study
arithmetic."
"Mathematics?"
"No, timber," he said laughingly, "but that is something you don't
understand. I'll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and
sail to Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account
of the customs and clearance.
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