would not do at all any longer, this humbug with these cabbage-leaves
and that coal business.

Thyra and Waldemar had also several times peeped out into the little
kitchen, to see if their mother had come and had put the coffee-pot on
the fire. But it was black under the kettle, and the air was so dark and
the room so cold that they jumped into bed again.

* * * * *

When they opened the great gates of merchant Hansen's coalstore at
Kristianshavn, Trofast sat there and shamefacedly looked askance; it was
really a loathsome piece of work that they had set him to do.

In a corner, between two empty baskets, they found a bundle of rags,
from which there came a faint moaning. There were a few drops of blood
upon the snow, and close by there lay, untouched, a piece of sugared
Vienna bread.

When the foreman understood the situation, he turned to Trofast to
praise him. But Trofast had already gone home; the position was quite
too uncomfortable for _him_.

They gathered her up, such as she was, wet and loathsome, and the
foreman decided that she should be placed upon the first coal-cart going
into town, and that they could stop at the hospital, so that the
professor himself might see whether she was worth repairing.

* * * * *