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1102 AUNTIE TOOTHACHE
double carpets, with three layers of paper underneath ; one sits there as if in a well-corked bottle with warm air. Yet, as I said, it was also comfortable in my room; the wind whistled outside.
Auntie talked and talked. Youth returned, Brewer Rasmussen returned, and old memories.
She could remember when I cut my first tooth and the family joy over it.
The first tooth ! The tooth of innocence, shining like a little white drop of milk,—the milk tooth. There came one, there came several, a whole row. Side by side, above and below, the most lovely children's teeth, and still only the advance troops, not the real ones which should be for the whole life. They came and also the wisdom teeth with them, the men at the wings, born with pain and great difficulty. They go again, every single one ! they go before their time of service is over, even the last tooth goes, and it is not a festival day, it is a day of sadness.
Then one is old, even although the honour is young. Such thoughts and conversation are not pleasant, and yet we talked about all that, we came back to childhood's years, talked and talked ; the clock struck twelve before Auntie retired to rest in the room close to mine.
1 Good night, my sweet child,' she called, ' now I sleep as if I lay in my own clothes-chest! '
And she went to rest, but rest there was none, neither in the house nor outside. The storm shook the windows, knocked with the long hanging window-catches, rang the neighbour's bell in the backyard. The lodger upstairs had come home. He went for a little evening walk up and down, threw his boots down, went to bed and to rest, but he snored so loud that one with good hearing could hear him through the roof.
I found no rest, the weather did not go to rest either, it was lively in an unmannerly degree. The wind whistled and blew in its own manner, my teeth also began to be lively, they whistled and sang in their own way. It turned into a great attack of toothache.
There was a draught from the window. The moon shone in on the floor. The light went and came as clouds came and went in the storm. There was restlessness in the light and |
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