anyhow--and he kissed me many times. His name was Flaten; his father was a
merchant. Of course, he being so handsome and dashing, we wanted to be
nice to him too. I should have done anything he asked; I used to pray to
God for him.

"I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wanted to be smart and pretty. That
was how we passed the time. Washing and cooking and mending fell to the
lot of my mother and sisters; we students wouldn't do anything but sit
round being very learned and getting seraphic hands. We were quite mad, as
I don't mind admitting. It was in the course of those years that we
acquired all the distorted ideas we've been burdened with since; we grew
dull with school wisdom, anaemic, unbalanced: sometimes terribly unhappy
about our sad lot, sometimes hysterically happy, and pluming ourselves on
our examinations and our importance. We were the pride of the family.

"And of course we were independent. We got jobs in offices, at forty
_kroner_ a month. Because now there was no longer anything in the
least extraordinary about us students--we were no rarity, there were
hundreds of us--forty _kroner_ was the most they gave us. Thirty went
to Father and Mother for our keep, and ten for ourselves. It wasn't
enough. We had to have pretty clothes for the office, and we were young,
we liked to walk out; but everything was too dear for us, we went into
debt, and some of us got engaged to poor devils like ourselves. The narrow
school life during our years of development did more than hurt our
intelligence; we wanted to show spirit, too, and not recoil before any
experience, so some of us went to the bad, others married--and with such
antecedents, of course, there was first-rate mismanagement in the home;
others disappeared to America. But probably all of them are still boasting
their languages and their examinations. It's all they have left--not
happiness or health or innocence, but their matriculation. Good God!"