His mother must have been there! Half an hour later she appeared.

She had only been out to buy a little new rye-bread, cheese, and butter to take up to her lodgings this evening.
In the meantime she cut some for herself and offered some to him.
Her ample figure, in addition to her effects, almost filled Nikolai's narrow little bedroom.

She had become rather short of breath, and acquired a double-chin with so much sitting indoors; the lower part of her face, which, in the brilliancy of youth, had been covered with pure, healthy mountain roses, now, as it moved in the process of eating, gave only the impression of powerful crushing with still solid teeth, in which, however, toothache, from many scalding cups of coffee, had made here and there serious inroads.

While she sat on the chest and he on the bed, she gave expression to the following: The farmer with whom she had bargained to live--for eighteen dollars a year and help at the busy seasons, while she found herself in coffee--was so pinching and mean about the board, that she had been obliged to buy one thing and another herself; well, he had seen the ham himself, and knew what she had been accustomed to at the Veyergangs'.
She could truly say that she had swallowed her food with tears many a time, when she thought of all that she had done for Ludvig and Lizzie, that she had carried them in her arms and been more to them than their own mother.

And then to think that the reward of all this should be hard work in the hay and corn harvest! No, she was praised by too many mouths for that! She had waited patiently, too, thinking they would remember old Barbara.
Oh no! one would have to remind them one's self, if that were to be! But now that she had Nikolai there, she had thought and meditated and reflected about setting up a little shop in the town.