Mogens and Other Stories | Page 5

Nicolai's, and they told her to run in and ask if they might see the gentleman. She ran as if her life depended on it, ran with both arms and legs, until she reached the door; there she placed one leg on the high doorstep, fastened her garter, and then rushed into the house. She reappeared immediately afterwards with two doors ajar behind her and called long before she reached the threshold, that the gentleman would be there in a moment; then she sat down on the doorstep, leaned against the wall, and peered at the strangers from underneath one of her arms.
The gentleman came, and proved to be a tall strongly-built man of some twenty years. The councilor's daughter was a little startled, when she recognized in him the man, who had sung during the rainstorm. But he looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes, from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.
The councilor's daughter dropped him an exuberant courtesy and said "Cuckoo," and laughed.
"Cuckoo?" asked the councilor. Why, it was the little girl's face! The man went quite crimson, and tried to say something when the councilor came with a question about the boat. Yes, it was at his service. But who was going to do the rowing? Why, he of course, said the girl, and paid no attention to what her father said about it; it was immaterial whether it was a bother to the gentleman, for sometimes he himself did not mind at all troubling other people. Then they went down to the boat, and on the way explained things to the councilor. They stepped into the boat, and were already a good ways out, before the girl had settled herself comfortably and found time to talk.
"I suppose it was something very learned you were reading," she said, "when I came and called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?"
"Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the 'History of Sir Peter with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.'"
"Who is that by?"
"By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. 'Vigoleis with the Golden Wheel' isn't by anybody either, neither is 'Bryde, the Hunter.'"
"I have never heard of those titles before."
"Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no, that is quite likely, they aren't fine books at all; they are the sort you buy from old women at fairs."
"That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?"
"Always? I don't read many books in the course of a year, and the kind I really like the best are those that have Indians in them."
"But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?"
"Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at home, and Miss Holm--my mother's companion--read them aloud after lunch and in the evenings; but I can't say that I cared for them; I don't like verse."
"Don't like verse? You said had, isn't your mother living any more?"
"No, neither is my father."
He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl broke the silence:
"Do you like paintings?"
"Altar-pieces? Oh, I don't know."
"Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?"
"Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well."
"You are laughing at me?"
"I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that"
"But aren't you a student?"
"Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing."
"But you must be something. You must do something?"
"But why?"
"Why, because--everybody does something!"
"Are you doing something?"
"Oh well, but you are not a lady."
"No, heaven be praised."
"Thank you."
He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the face and asked:
"What do you mean by that?--No, don't be angry with me; I will tell you something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it. You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her on my arm through the whole garden and