You may give me the accounts later.
LAURA [Curtesies.] Thanks so much. Do you too keep an account of
what you spend besides the housekeeping money?
CAPTAIN. That doesn't concern you.
LAURA. No, that's true--just as little as my child's education
concerns me. Have the gentlemen come to a decision after this
evening's conference?
CAPTAIN. I had already come to a decision, and therefore it only
remained for me to talk it over with the one friend I and the
family have in common. Bertha is to go to boarding school in town,
and starts in a fortnight.
LAURA. To which boarding school, if I may venture to ask?
CAPTAIN. Professor Saefberg's.
LAURA. That free thinker!
CAPTAIN. According to the law, children are to be brought up in
their father's faith.
LAURA. And the mother has no voice in the matter?
CAPTAIN. None whatever. She has sold her birthright by a legal
transaction, and forfeited her rights in return for the man's
responsibility of caring for her and her children.
LAURA. That is to say she has no rights concerning her child.
CAPTAIN. No, none at all. When once one has sold one's goods, one
cannot have them back and still keep the money.
LAURA. But if both father and mother should agree?
CAPTAIN. Do you think that could ever happen? I want her to live in
town, you want her to stay at home. The arithmetical result would
be that she remain at the railway station midway between train and
home. This is a knot that cannot be untied, you see.
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