But perhaps they were going to a prayer-meeting," she added, winking with one eye.
"What nonsense are you talking! You'd better take care what you say!" he exclaimed angrily.
"Ha, ha!" she laughed; "you're not such a stranger to him--he's almost related.

We're so grand, we are! We heard enough of that from your mother last summer, when she got him to pay for that fine black dress, and they wouldn't let her have credit for any more sewing materials for her shop." Nikolai had heard enough.
His mother had wrung his very blood from him, and then--deceived him in spite of it.
He suddenly saw her before him in the cold light of indifference.
She had never been a mother to him, had never cared a pin's head about him! All this about a mother had only been something he had imagined.
He made a movement with his hands as if he were done with her.

The one she cared about, and had a mother's feeling for, was this-- He did not know whether he had thought the name himself, or whether Jakobina had said it; but it rang in his ears like the stroke of a hammer on a shining anvil, as he rushed down: "Ludvig Veyergang!" He had robbed him of his mother from his earliest childhood.

Was he going to drag Silla away from him too?
The thought at last became too impossible, and he slackened his pace.
That Jakobina was always so full of gossip and lies! This about Silla was all nonsense! There was nothing so dreadful in the three girls having taken a trip down to see a little of the fair; and they made that sharp-tongued Jakobina, whom they did not want to have with them, think they were all three going to the ball.
He, he, he! it was Silla who had thought of that! He would tell her he had seen that at once as soon as she told him.
He shook his head; for a moment he felt immensely re-assured, and relapsed into the bitter thoughts about his mother.
But--it would not be so out of the way if he went and looked for them; they might have taken it into their heads to stand outside and listen to the music.
The kettle-drums at the place of amusement were rattling out delight far into the air.

From the menagerie close by brayed a shrieking trumpet, and the street outside was black with people.
It is not easy to say why it should have been so, but uneasiness again took possession of him.
In the illuminated entrance the strings and lines of lamps shone with an uncertain light in the raw gusty evening air; whole and half lines grew dim and almost went out, and then flared up again with a glare over the snow and the inpouring streams of people.
He could only advance at a foot's pace here; but while he slowly worked his way in, he looked all round.