"What did I say?" asks the astonished widower. "Ugh!" says the
bookseller, mimicking him, and the conversation degenerates into a
universal grinning and a cloud of tobacco smoke.
It is midnight. The piano upstairs, which has accompanied a mixed
choir of male and female voices, is silent. The waiter has finished
his countless journeys from the speaking tube to the verandah; the
proprietor enters into his daybook the last few bottles of champagne
which have been ordered upstairs. The three friends rise from their
chairs and go home, two to their "virgin couches," and the bookseller
to his Stafva.
When schoolmaster Blom had reached his twentieth year, he was compelled
to interrupt his studies at Upsala and accept a post as assistant teacher
at Stockholm. As he, in addition, gave private lessons, he made quite a
good income. He did not ask much of life. All he wanted was peace and
cleanliness. An elderly lady let him a furnished room and there he found
more than a bachelor finds as a rule. She looked after him and was kind
to him; she gave him all the tenderness which nature had intended her to
bestow on the new generation that was to spring from her. She mended his
clothes and looked after him generally.
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