Now it seemed to have
wakened up again. Footsteps went in and out, and the stairs creaked once
more under the tread of feet, small, pattering, exploring feet, and
big feet going about on grown-up errands. There was movement in every
corner: a rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen; fires blazed up, and
smoke began to rise from the chimney; people passing by outside looked
up at it and saw that the dead old house had come to life again.
Peer was weak still after his illness, but he could help a little with
the unpacking. It took very little, though, to make him out of breath
and giddy, and there was a sledge-hammer continually thumping somewhere
in the back of his head. Suppose--suppose, after all, the change here
does you no good? You are at the last stage. You've managed to borrow
the money to keep you all here for a year. And then? Your wife and
children? Hush!--better not think of that. Not that; think of anything
else, only not that.
Clothes to be carried upstairs. Yes, yes--and to think it was all to end
in your living on other people's charity. Even that can't go on long. If
you should be no better next summer--or two years hence?--what then?
For yourself--yes, there's always one way out for you. But Merle and the
children? Hush, don't think of it! Once it was your whole duty to finish
a certain piece of work in a certain time. Now it is your duty to get
well again, to be as strong as a horse by next year. It is your duty. If
only the sledge-hammer would stop, that cursed sledge-hammer in the back
of your head.
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