She then received such full information, once for all, both as to why Mrs.Holman had shut him in, and what they had to go through daily with that boy, that Maren was completely nonplussed.

For this Mrs.Holman could stake her life upon, that if there was any one in the house who could not stand disorder or unseemly behaviour, it was she.

She could not imagine a worse punishment than to have it said of her that she allowed shame and depravity to flourish in her sight.
But when Maren sat down there in the evening by the lantern on the chopping-block, and could hear the boy screaming right from the Holmans' room, she was not capable of going upstairs until the worst was over.
She thought she had never heard anything so heart-rending, even though it was in the cause of justice.
Up with Maren was a kind of harbour of refuge for the boy.

He would sit there as quiet as a mouse in the corner by the wood-box, carving himself boats, which he put under his blouse when he carried Holman's dinner down to the workshop near the quay.
To represent, however, that Nikolai's existence was passed, so to speak, in the coal-cellar, or under blows on back and ear from Mrs.Holman's warm hands, would be an exaggeration.

He had also his palmy days, when Mrs.Holman overflowed with words of praise--praise, if not exactly of him, yet of everything that she had accomplished in her daily toil for his moral improvement.
Twice a year she had to call for the payment for him at the Consul-General's office in the town.