The mayor was standing at his open window; he was wearing a dress shirt with a dainty breastpin in its frill. He was very well shaven, self-done, though he had cut himself slightly and had stuck a small bit of newspaper over the cut.
"Listen, youngster!" he boomed.
The youngster was none other than the washerwoman's son, who respectfully took off his cap as he passed. This cap was broken at the rim, so that he could put it into his pocket. In his poor but clean and very neatly mended clothes, and his heavy wooden shoes, the boy stood as respectfully as if he were before the king.
"You're a good boy, a well-behaved lad!" said the Mayor. "I suppose your mother is washing down at the river, and no doubt you are going to bring her what you have in your pocket. That's an awful thing with your mother! How much have you there?"
"A half pint," said the boy in a low, trembling voice.
"And this morning she had the same?" continued the Mayor.
"No, it was yesterday!" answered the boy.
"Two halves make a whole! She is no good! It is sad there are such people. Tell your mother she ought to be ashamed of herself. Don't you become a drunkard-but I suppose you will! Poor child! Run along now."
And the boy went, still holding his cap in his hand, while the wind rippled the waves of his yellow hair. He went down the street and through an alley to the river, where his mother stood at her washing stool in the water, beating the heavy linen with a wooden beater. The current was strong, for the mill's sluices were open; the bed sheet was dragged along by the stream and nearly swept away her washing stool, and the woman had all she could do to stand up against it.
"I was almost carried away," she said. "It's a good thing you've come, for I need something to strengthen me. It's so cold in the water; I've been standing here for six hours. Have you brought me anything?"
The boy drew forth a flask, and his mother put it to her lips and drank a little.
"Oh, that does me good! How it warms me! It's just as good as hot food, and it isn't as expensive! Drink, my boy! You look so pale, and you're freezing in your thin clothes. Remember it is autumn. Ooh, the water is cold! If only I don't get ill! But I won't. Give me a little more, and drink some yourself, but only a little drop, for you mustn't get used to it, my poor dear child!"
And she walked out of the water and up onto the bridge where the boy stood. The water dripped from the straw mat that she had tied around her waist and from her petticoat.
"I work and slave till the blood runs out at my fingernails, but I do it gladly if I can bring you up honestly, my sweet child!"
Just then came an elderly woman, poorly clad, lame in one leg, and with an enormously large, false curl hanging down over one of her eyes, which was blind. This curl was supposed to hide the eye, but it only made the defect the more conspicuous. The neighbors called her "limping Maren with the curl," and she was an old friend of the washerwoman's.
"You poor thing," she cried, "slaving and toiling in the cold water! You certainly need something to warm you a little, and yet the gossips cry about the few drops you take!" And soon all that the Mayor had said to the boy was repeated to his mother, for Maren had overheard it, and it had angered her to hear him talk so to the child about his own mother and the few drops she took, because on that same day the Mayor was having a big dinner party with many bottles of wine.
"Good wine, strong wine! Many will drink more than they should, but they don't call that drinking. They are all right, but you are good for nothing!"
"What! Did the Mayor really say that, child?" asked the laundress, her lips quivering. "So you have a mother who is good for nothing! Perhaps he's right, though he shouldn't say so to a child. But I mustn't complain; good things have come to me from that house."
"Why, yes, you were in service there, when the Mayor's parents were alive. That was many years ago. Many bushels of salt have been eaten since then, so people may well be thirsty! laughed Maren. "The big dinner today at the Mayor's would have been postponed if everything hadn't been prepared. I heard the news from the porter. A letter came, an hour ago, telling them that the Mayor's younger brother, in Copenhagen, is dead."
"Dead!" cried the laundress, turning as white as a ghost.