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150 longer so clean, so orderly, and so exemplary that she could plume herself upon her work, she gradually withdrew; and when Sören's wife once in a while came to ask her for advice or assistance, the Sheriff's lady would mount her high horse, until Marie ceased to trouble her. But if, in society, conversation happened to fall upon the Sheriff's clerk, and any one expressed compassion for his poor wife, with her many children and her miserable income, Mrs. Olsen would not fail to put in her word with great decision: "I can assure you it would be just the same if Marie had twice as much to live on and no children at all. You see, she's—" and Mrs. Olsen made a motion with her hands, as if she were squandering something abroad, to right and left.

Marie seldom went to parties, and if she did appear, in her at least ten-times-altered marriage dress, it was generally to sit alone in a corner, or to carry on a tedious conversation with a similarly situated housewife about the dearness of the times and the unreasonableness of servant-girls.

And the young ladies who had gathered the gentlemen around them, either in the middle of the room or wherever they found the most comfortable chairs to stretch themselves in, whispered to each other: "How tiresome it is that young married women can never talk about anything but housekeeping and the nursery."