She knew two girls in Bergen who had done it; but one of them
had got two months' imprisonment because she had been a fool and
hadn't killed it, but only left it out to freeze to death; and the
other had been acquitted. "No," said Barbro, "the law's not so cruel
hard now as it used to be. And besides, it's not always it gets found
out." There was a girl in Bergen at the hotel who had killed two
children; she was from Christiania, and wore a hat--a hat with
feathers in. They had given her three months for the second one, but
the first was never discovered, said Barbro.
Axel listened to all this and grew more than ever afraid of her. He
tried to understand, to make out things a little in the darkness, but
she was right after all; he took these things too seriously in his
way. With all her vulgar depravity, Barbro was not worth a single
earnest thought. Infanticide meant nothing to her, there was nothing
extraordinary in the killing of a child; she thought of it only
with the looseness and moral nastiness that was to be expected of a
servant-girl.
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