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Then, at the sale department of the ironfoundry, he came to himself again. Here at last were things worth looking at. Right up against the glass were lovely heavy castings, pieces of machinery, and metal parts. Pumps of all sizes, stacks of copper and brass tubing, taps and boiler gauges, and heaps of nuts and bolts and screws, as if a wagon load had been tipped down at random. Then there were spiral coils of the most delicious lead and hempen packing, and farther back, at the end of the shop, stood a mail-clad army of stoves. Somehow or other, Egholm always found comfort in the sight of masses of cold metal. Possibly it drew off the warmth of his over-heated brain.

Rothe, the ironfounder, a giant of a man, stood on the steps calling to passers-by in greeting: “Goddag, goddag!” – the words seemed to echo in the shield-like cavity of his stomach. His great head shone as if it were of burnished copper. Now he caught sight of Egholm.

“Hey, goddag, goddag, Egholm! How’s the turbine getting on?”

Egholm walked in and spluttered out his latest ideas. Rothe laughed, and slapped him genially on the shoulder.

“Henrik Vang’s full of it. Talks of nothing else down at the hotel. But, look here – when are you going to get it done? Egholm’s famous turbine…”

“Well, there’s one or two little things I still want,” said Egholm, walking round the shop and fingering the items that caught his attention.

“What sort of things?”

“A boat, for instance, and a small boiler.” Egholm mentioned these as carelessly as if it had been a matter of a couple of waistcoat buttons. “But” – he broke off suddenly – “what’s that thing there?” He dragged at something in the warehouse behind.

“That? Oh, that’s Dr. Hoff’s old bath oven. I’ve just sent him a new one.”

Egholm was still pulling the thing about, when Rothe, who was in his best lunch-time and Christmas-time mood, said:

“If it’s any good to you, bring round a barrow and take it along.”

Whereupon he slapped Egholm again on the shoulder, and took up his post again at the door, dealing out his double-barrelled greetings: “Goddag – goddag!”

Egholm was in high spirits for quite a time over his unexpected coup. Then, happening to catch sight of himself in a mirror-backed window, he started in horror to see what a ghastly figure he made.

Yellow and haggard, with his black beard hanging limp and dead over his worn and stained waistcoat. A disgusting sight.

Could it really be the Lord’s intention to starve him to death?

The thought almost brought him to his knees; he turned in through the churchyard gate, as to a refuge where he could recover himself. The naked branches of the mighty chestnuts sang in the wind, and great heavy drops fell like tears from the roof of the church.

The wind must have changed. It was thawing now.

Egholm noticed that he no longer felt the biting cold. Perhaps, after all, it was not so cruelly meant.

One end of the fire-ladder had fallen down. Egholm seated himself on it, with his back against the church wall. He was physically exhausted, and his brain had hardly rested for the past twenty-four hours.

It generally made him feel better to come in here for a while and look out over the landscape he loved.

There at his feet lay the Custom House, its acute-angled roof just on a level with the church foundations. Down in the office there sat Old Poulsen at one window and Wassermann himself at the other. Funny thing, really, that Poulsen should be called Old Poulsen, for the sake of the few grey hairs about his ears – he was an infant, really, compared with Wassermann.

How old could Wassermann be? Some said eighty-eight, but, looking at his mummy-face, one might feel more inclined to think he had stood as a man in the prime of life, wearing his gold-braided cap, what time Noah’s Ark had landed on Mount Ararat, and he had come to examine the ship’s papers.

Egholm gave a little grunt.

There was but a single vessel in the harbour – a schooner, laid up for the winter. Its masts looked thin and, as it were, leafless, with the sails and rigging taken down. The boys had built themselves a snow hut out on the ice under its bowsprit. The current of the Belt was too strong just here for the ice to hold it altogether in check; a little farther north, there had been a battle between the two, and the ice had lost. Mighty sheets of it came floating down the channel; off the mole, they packed and closed in an angry whirl, setting their teeth in the piles, but were torn away ruthlessly and sent on southward again.

In the curve of the channel between the black woods, the ice-floes looked like a flock of white swans on a blue lake. The grey-green line of hills on the Jutland side looked far away in the misty air, though the distance was not so great but that one could count the windows of the ferry station over between the trees.

Egholm’s brain had rested for just the space of time it took to turn his head from right to left and back again. Now it began hammering again; he had caught sight of a certain green-painted dinghy down by the harbour, and that particular craft interested him more than all the other rowing boats in the world.

But – in Heaven’s name – how was he to gain possession?

He rose, and went down into the coal-cellar of the church, where he commenced to pray. His thoughts were confused with excitement, he did not understand his own words, and when he stood up again, the coals came rattling down with a sound as of scornful laughter. Could a man go to the devil and get hold of fifty kroner that way?

Or, could not a man settle the business himself, by his own unaided power? Why this constant begging round?

Egholm walked out of the churchyard, talking to himself, and took the road to Kongeskoven – thus completing the whole circuit of the town and neighbourhood for that day.

All his inventions, were they of no more value when it came to the point than that he must die of hunger? Surely there should be some appreciation of them – at any rate, in higher quarters. He thought of some of the more important; not mere ideas he had busied himself with to pass the time, shaking them out of his sleeve like a conjurer, but those that were really worth something, say, a million.

As, for instance, the pair of frictionless wheels for railway carriages – that should have meant an income to the inventor out of every pair of wheels in all the world, if only God had lifted a little finger to help.

And then that preparation of his for turning yellow bricks red – a profit of several kroner per thousand of bricks!

There was Egholm’s smoke-consumer, that would make the atmosphere of great cities as pure as the purest sea air.

There was … but, no; it was enough. These three supreme inventions of his were in themselves sufficient to condemn that God up there!

Plainly, God was not disposed to help: He kept down genius out of sheer envy.

Egholm walked into the woods, beating his breast and threatening high Heaven. Once he happened to strike himself on the mouth, and this set his thoughts off in an entirely new direction, where they tore away even more furiously, and flung themselves cascading into headlong depths.

The blow had reminded him of that last affair with Anna – yesterday morning, was it, or the day before?

“It’s a lie!” he hissed, kicking at a root. “A downright lie, fostered in a venomous woman’s brain. Her nose came on to bleed, that was all. Just an ordinary case of nose-bleeding, that happened to come on at the same time. But, of course, she made the most of it. I didn’t do anything worse than” – here he lashed out with his stick – “other days, but then she starts screaming hysterically, and there’s the blood trickling down through her fingers. Ugly – horrible…”

What was that?

Egholm came to a standstill in the middle of the path, and looked round with staring eyes.

What was this? Was he to be haunted now, in broad daylight? Surely it might at least have the decency to wait till night?

No; it was here. The same old story from his sleepless nights; the fights with Anna over again. Every word that had been spoken between them. And then, at the decisive moment – the loved and detested face of Clara Steen rising up to take the blows – Clara’s white fingers vainly trying to stop that crimson stream… Clara’s eyes, looking at him…

“I must be ill, I think,” he murmured to himself. “And there’s a nasty pain here in the middle of my chest. Throbbing and throbbing like anything. Not quite in the middle, though – no, a little to the left.”

He burst out into a wild laugh and beat his forehead with the back of his hand.

Not so strange, after all, that it should be more to the left. The heart was on the left side. Ha ha! yes, he was a witty fellow, after all!

But the drama was still going on before his eyes. Oh, but he would not see it. No, no – not here in the daytime. For the love of God, let the curtain fall! Leave it till the night, when all sorts of things happened anyway, beyond understanding. Here, in the middle of the road, he could not go smashing pictures in broad daylight. It was too much to ask.

And – well, he was ready to admit, if that would help at all, that it wasn’t just ordinary nose-bleeding. No, Heaven help him, he had struck her with all his force right across nose and mouth. Well, then, now he had confessed. Wasn’t that enough?

Where was the sense of being an inventor and a natural healer, if he could not find a pain-killer for his own case?

Still, perhaps he might, after all. Suppose, now, he were to make one smart cut and tear that beating heart right out, all would be well.

Next moment he sawed the fancy across with a grin. Ugh! poetic nonsense!

No – but there was something else – something far better…

Here, close by, must be Fruedammen, the Lady Pool, where a noble dame had once disappeared in her bridal chariot with all eight horses. Surely it would make things easier to get down deep into that?

Aha! Good old inventor – never at a loss!

He hung his stick over his arm and folded his hands.

“Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for this once – for just this once.”

Some critical self within himself marked the words as lisping and ridiculous.

He ran at a stumbling trot along the ground over the serpentine contortions of the great beech roots. It could not be more than a minute’s walk to the pool. But there was no time to be lost.

Curious, by the way, that a man should for close on fifty years have clung to life tooth and nail, and now, to-day, on Christmas Eve, be hurrying to get rid of it.

What would they say to it all at home?

Would Hedvig stand up straight and stiff and say, “A good thing, too”?

And Emanuel, the child of victory, what would be his future? Ah, well, there was little victory to be expected there, after all. No, that turbine was the true victory child.

Farewell, smooth round thing, that should have gone one day with a soft “dut-dut,” while all the world shouted hurrah and wept at the same moment.

Egholm found himself weeping at the thought, and his legs grew weak under him, but he kept up his pace, and took a last evasive mental farewell of Anna as he went.

Now, just across to the other side of the road – here it was.

There was a little low seat with many initials cut in. Egholm ran round it, swept past a thorn-bush, tearing his face against the branches, and stood breathing heavily on the brink of the bottomless pool in the forest.

A chill shudder passed through him. His head sank forward. A moment after he gave a queer little laugh, shrugged his shoulders, then staggered up to a tree and leaned against it.

On the farther side of the pool, a blackbird was rustling in the leaves; now it flew off with a long whistling cry. It was a little past noon. Now and again a draggled ray of sunlight slipped through the covering of clouds, and the branches threw pale shadows in its gleam. Only a second they remained, then vanished again like spirits.

Egholm felt his knees sinking – he was deadly tired. Then, at the sound of a cart crushing through the wood far away, he drew himself up with a sigh and walked off among the trees.

The blood began pulsing in long swells through his veins, following on his excitement, but there was no pain anywhere now. He had a nice strong feeling of having been honest.

He murmured a few words of Sivert’s oracular speech that had stuck in his mind:

“It’s ever so hard to do a thing when it’s impossible.”

Suppose he tried laughing a little at the whole thing. He had hurried to the pool – and lo, the ice was Heaven knows how many inches thick. Of course, it was. Still, he had been honest – God was his witness to that. It must have been the open water of the Belt that made him forget.

It was evening before he found himself back, wiping his shoes carefully and gently in the passage. So unwontedly gentle was he, indeed, that Anna came out in a fright with the lamp to see who was there.

“Oh, heavens, is it you, Egholm? We’ve been almost out of our wits because you didn’t come back. Wherever have you been all day?”

She rubbed his wet things with a towel, and told of the joint of pork that had come from the Christmas Charity Committee, and the cakes that Hedvig had brought home.

She rubbed away, chattering all the time, mentioning casually what a blessing it was Sivert had got that place with the glazier’s – to have his own room and all. She stopped, astounded at her own boldness in daring to utter Sivert’s name.

But Egholm made no sound, and she went on, scraping the mud from his boots the while, to tell how she had just happened to think of Nøckel, the glazier, if he might happen to want a boy, and she had hardly got inside the door when they said yes, and were glad to have him.

“He can stay here this evening – if you like,” said his father.

Fru Egholm could hardly believe her ears, and Sivert, carefully hidden away in the pantry, fancied, too, that there must be something queer behind it all.

“Don’t somehow feel like being thrashed to-day, either,” he said, darkly reflecting.

So the Egholms had some sort of a Christmas, after all. The gentler feelings flourished in every heart. Egholm himself gave orders that Marinus from the carpenter’s shop should be sent for, having found him gazing longingly in through a window. On Christmas Eve, it was a duty to entertain the poor at one’s table, he said, if one wanted to feel any Christmas rejoicing oneself. His wife found this a very pretty sentiment, with the one reservation that the principle, to her mind, was followed out to an extreme degree in their case, since the five who were daily entertained at their board were undeniably poor themselves.

Later in the evening, she went to the window, and with a certain awkwardness brought over the champagne blossom and set it on a chair in the middle of the room with a candle in front. Anyone could see it was meant to be a Christmas tree, all ready decked. Marinus giggled at Sivert, but Hedvig rose of her own accord, stepped out into their midst like an actress, and sang till the windows rattled about sweet and joyous Christmastide.

“Now we ought to hand round the presents,” said Fru Egholm to Marinus, with a laugh.

Egholm joined absently in the laugh. He had a vague idea of having already received a Christmas present that was worth something.

He had been given back his life.

And that was, after all, a thing of some importance, if he was ever to get that turbine done.

XIX

After a cruel winter came the spring at last, offering gentle hands to all mankind. Folk might be seen walking in the streets, hat in hand, in gratitude and veneration towards the bright, happy face of the sun.

It was much the same with the flowers; they came forth in hosts from out of the earth, saw the sun, and bowed.

The beech, knowing its flowers were nothing to speak of, put on its pale green silk first thing in the morning, and found no reason to be ashamed, but the apple tree surpassed them all; it had to put on its bridal dress with a blush.

Fru Egholm left the kitchen window open all day long. A branch from Andreasen’s espalier, an apple branch of all things, thrust itself up across the opening. It was almost her property, so to speak, that apple branch. She showed Emanuel how the bees came flying up, whispered something sweet into the ears of the little flower things, and were given honeyed kisses in return before flying off again.

Fru Egholm did more than that for her little boy; she got Hedvig to take him out every afternoon into the meadow near by. He came home with a chain of dandelion stalks round his neck, and one day he even had a dead butterfly in his clammy little fist. That day, he could hardly speak for the wonders he had seen.

Spring came to Egholm, too. He had got his boat – the very green one he had prayed for. Vang had procured it for him, by some means unknown.

“My dear fellow, my old and trusted friend, let me make you a present of it. Here you are, the boat is yours, presented by a circle of friends.”

And the pair overflowed in a transport of mutual affection.

The boiler was already in its place, and the funnel towered proudly above, painted a fine bold red. The screw stuck out behind, and could revolve when turned by hand. All looked well, so far.

But the turbine itself, the beating heart that was to make the thing alive, was not yet finished.

Krogh, the old blacksmith, worked away at it till his yellow drooping jaws shook. His tools were mediæval. What a machine drill could have managed in an afternoon, he took a week to do. Egholm turned up his eyes to heaven, when he saw how little had been done in twenty-four hours, but he said nothing. The fact was, that Krogh had one quality which rendered him more valuable than all other blacksmiths together: he was willing to work without seeing the money first. Moreover, his work was good when it was done, and in spite of his sour looks, he took a real interest in the project.

Egholm was so kindly and easy to get on with all that spring that his wife was quite uneasy about him at times. All the hours he could spare from his studio – and they, alas, were not a few – he spent down on the beach, scraping and patching and painting his wonderful creation.

At home, he would sit dreaming in the arm-chair, so far removed from all reality that Emanuel might sing and prattle as much as he pleased without being stopped by a peremptory order from his father.

He was sitting thus one evening towards the end of May; both Emanuel and Hedvig were asleep. The day had been hot, and the heat still hung in the low-ceiled rooms. The children were tossing restlessly in their beds. If only one dared to open a window – but no; the night air was a thing to be careful about, while there were children in the place, thought Fru Egholm to herself. It was late, very late, but what did that matter, as long as there was oil enough in the lamp?

“Whatever are you sitting there thinking about?” she asked, when the silence had lasted an eternity. There was not the slightest danger now in such a piece of familiarity on her part. Not as he had been lately.

“Nothing,” said Egholm, drawing in his breath as if he had just emerged from the depths of the sea. “What’s that you’re fussing about now?”

“Wassermann’s wig. Look at it – it’s simply falling to pieces. But as for a new one – well, you should have seen his wife’s face when I spoke of it. And if it hadn’t been that there’s a chance they might take Hedvig as maid there, I’d never…”

“What d’you get for a bit of work like that?”

“Well, it ought to be a krone, but seventy-five øre I will have, and that’s the least. Though I don’t suppose she’ll offer me more than fifty, the stingy old wretch.”

Egholm sat silent a while, then involuntarily he lied a little. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “what I was thinking about. You know that verse from ‘Adam Homo’:

 
“‘What trouble’s worst? We’ve trials enough, Lord knows
If I should ask, a score of voices swift
Would tell me where they found the “little rift”
Each as experience led him to suppose.
One says ’tis boredom, one, ’tis married life;
Another finds it worse without a wife.
One thinks remorsefully of sins committed,
Another with regret of those omitted.
One, of all pains we’ve suffered since the Fall,
Will reckon Money Troubles worst of all.’
 

Yes, money troubles – that’s the worst. Paludan Müller, he knew. And he’s my favourite poet. He knew everything!”

And Egholm fell to talking pitifully of poverty, the nightmare that had its teeth in his throat, and could not be torn away.

“But there’s more comes after,” said Anna, when he paused. “Don’t you remember the next verse?”

“I know the whole thing off by heart. Anywhere you like to choose.”

“Well, then, you know that money troubles aren’t the worst in the world. It’s no good losing courage like that. And we’re getting on nicely now, really. Etatsraaden said about the rhubarb, we might…”

She put forth all her womanly arts to comfort him, but in vain. Still she kept on – and her voice was much the same as when she was soothing Emanuel.

Egholm let her go on; yes, they were getting on nicely now, he thought to himself, and smiled bitterly. Oh yes, nicely, magnificently!

The globe of the lamp was stuck together with strips of newspaper. Before the window hung a piece of faded green stuff in two tapes, drooping down to a slack fold in the middle. At the sides were ragged, dusty curtains, into which Anna had stuck some paper flowers.

On the walls were a couple of old engravings, an embroidered newspaper-holder of his wife’s, and a few fretwork brackets and photograph frames, these being Sivert’s work.

The big mirror, too, looked ridiculous, really, at that angle – it had to be slanted forward to an excessive degree, owing to the lowness of the room. Egholm could see himself in it, and the children’s bed as well. Emanuel lay on the settee, but Hedvig’s bed, in the little side room, consisted of three chairs. Her coverlet was his old uniform cloak, and the chairs rocked at every breath she drew.

Poverty in every corner. The very pattern of the wallpaper was formed of holes and patches of damp.

True, there were the two arm-chairs and the chest of drawers, but…

His wife was still talking away of all the good things they had to be thankful for. Of Hedvig, coming home regularly with her good wages, and the chance now of getting a place at ten kroner, at Wassermann’s. And then Sivert, still at the glazier’s this ever so long. Surely it was a mercy they could be proud of their children?

And soon Egholm himself would have finished that steamboat thing of his… Fru Egholm threw out this last by some chance, having exhausted all other items that could reasonably be included.

Her husband started. It was what he had been thinking of all the evening himself. But, anxious not to betray the fact, he said only:

“Yes; if I’m lucky.”

But Anna saw through him all the same. Stupid of her not to have thought before of the one thing that was all the world to him.

“And why shouldn’t you be lucky, I should like to know? You haven’t lost faith in your own invention?”

“It’s a curious thing,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “One moment I believe in it, and the next I don’t. How is it possible that the trained experts with all modern equipment at their backs – and money, most of all – with nothing to worry about but their own calculations and plans – how could they have missed the solution of the problem when it seems to me as plain as the nose on your face?”

“Why, as to that, I don’t know, I’m sure. But that steam cart you made, you know, just before Hedvig was born, that didn’t work.”

“Oh, what’s that got to do with it?” said Egholm irritably.

His wife pointed warningly towards the sleeping children. “Sh!” she said. Then, noticing that the cloak had slipped down from Hedvig’s legs, she hastened to tuck it up again. Egholm calmed down.

“Don’t mix up a steam cart and a turbine,” he said when she re-entered the room. “I didn’t take any particular trouble over that steam cart – at any rate, not enough. After all, it was only construction work, that. But a turbine that can reverse– that’s an independent invention. I’d give my heart’s blood to realise it. You know what a friction coupling is, I suppose?”

“Do you mean the thing with the two balls, that swing round and look like an umbrella?”

“Good heavens, no! You’re thinking of a centrifugal regulator valve.”

“Oh well, well, then…”

No, it was no use talking to her; she muddled up the simplest things imaginable. Egholm wrung his hands and was silent.

But a little after, he looked up brightly and suggested they should go and have a look at the machinery now, both together.

Anna shook her head. What an idea!

“Aren’t you a bit interested in my things?”

“Why, that you know I am, Egholm. But you wouldn’t ask me to go running out now in the middle of the night. Look, it’s half-past one!”

“But you say you never can go out in the daytime.”

This was true; Anna never set foot outside the door as long as it was light. Her dress had been ruined altogether this winter, from having to use it for Emanuel’s bedclothes at night. And what was the use of having rooms across a courtyard, when Andreasen’s workmen came running to the window every time they heard the door?

“But the lamp might upset, and the house burn down and the children in it.”

“Turn it out, then, of course. Don’t talk such a lot.”

Fru Egholm writhed; there was no persuading him any way once he had taken a thing into his head.

Hesitatingly she took out a white knitted kerchief from a drawer. She had almost forgotten what it was like to put on one’s things to go out…

It was moonlight outside; the shadow of the tall workshop roof lay coal-black over half the courtyard, leaving the remainder white as if it had been lime-washed.

Every step she took seemed new and strange. So softly their steps fell in the thick dust as they crossed the road.

Up in the old churchyard, every tree stood like a temple of perfume in the quiet, soft night. And all the time, she was marvelling that it really was moonlight. She had not noticed it at home – doubtless because the lamp was burning.

The tears came into her eyes – just such a moonlight night it had been the time they…

And here she was walking with him, just as then.

Surely, it was enough to turn one’s head.

Here was Egholm actually taking her arm. Taking her arm!..

Great moths and small glided silently past; one of them vanished into the hedge as if by magic.

Bats showed up here and there against the pale sky, flung about like leaves in the wind. From the meadow came a quivering chorus of a thousand frogs.

“It must be like this in Paradise,” she said faintly.

“Ah, wait till you can see the boat,” said her husband.

The dew on the thick grass down by the beach soaked through her boots and stockings. Moonlight and stockings wet with dew… Oh, it was not just like that time now; it was that time … that night at Aalborg, after the dance at the assembly rooms, where she had met the interesting young photographer – the pale one, as they called him – and let herself be tempted to go out for a walk in the woods after. And Thea, her sister, who was with them, had almost pinched her arm black and blue in her excitement. But it had to be; he was irresistible, with his foreign-looking appearance, his silver-mounted stick, and his smartly creaking calfskin boots.

He had not danced himself, by the way, but sat majestically apart drinking his tea.

But how he could talk! Until one hardly knew if it was real or all a dream…

It was light when she pulled off her soaking wet stockings and her sodden dancing shoes.

Yes, it must be some good angel that had put back the clock of time to-night. Here she was, walking in the woods of Aalborg with her lover. There was the fjord, and the moon drawing a silvery path right to her feet. Come, come!

She gazed with dimmed eyes towards the wondrous ball in the heavens, that called up tides in the seas and in hearts; she clung trustingly to her friend’s arm. And, glancing at him sideways, she saw that his eyes were looking out towards it too. Yes, their glances moved together, taking the same road out over the gliding waters of the Belt, in through a gate of clouds, to kneel at the full moon, that is the God of Fools.

A startled bird rose at their feet and flew, the air rushing audibly in its feathers.

“Listen – a lark! And singing now, though it’s night!”

“A lark!” Egholm took this, too, as an omen of good fortune for his turbine.

At the foot of the slope lay the boat, drawn up on land with props against the sides.

He explained it all, the parts that were there and the rest that should be added as soon as Krogh had got the turbine finished. He spoke eagerly and disconnectedly; none but an expert could have understood him. But Anna kept on saying:

“Yes, yes, I can understand that, of course. Ever so much better that way, yes. And how prettily it’s painted, the boiler there. I thought it would be just an old rusty stove. And the boat – why, it’s quite a ship in itself.”

“Beautiful little boat, isn’t it?” said Egholm, in high good humour now. “And I’ve caulked it all over. Take my word for it, the natives’ll stare a bit when the day comes, and they see it racing away. Let’s sit down and look at it a bit. Here, Anna, just here.”

They sat down, but it was wet in the tufty grass.

“We can climb up in the boat and sit there.”

Anna hesitated at first, but soon gave way. After all, everything was topsy-turvy already; she hardly knew if she were awake or dreaming. Egholm turned up an old bucket. “Here!” and he offered his hand like a polite cavalier and helped her up.

The summer night was all about them. The lapping of the waves sounded now near, now far; it was like delicate footsteps. For a little while neither spoke.

“But – you’re not crying, Anna, dear?” He had felt her shoulders quivering.

“We’ve been so far away from each other; strangers like,” she sniffed. And then she broke down completely. “Anna, dear,” he had said. “Far away from each other… I don’t see how… Seems to me we’ve been seeing each other all day the same as usual.”