The Great Hunger | Page 9

easily as if quite at home. One of the girls had been in service for a while in a Consul's family in the town, and knew the ways of gentlefolk, and she fetched a bowl of milk and offered it with a curtsy and a: "Will the Captain please to take some milk?" "Thanks, thanks," said the visitor. "And what is your name, my dear? Come, there's nothing to blush about. Nicoline? First-rate! And you? Lusiana? That's right." He looked at the red-rimmed basin, and, taking it up, all but emptied it at a draught, then, wiping his beard, took breath. "Phu!--that was good. Well, so here I am." And he looked around the room and at each of them in turn, and smiled, and drummed with his fingers, and said, "Well, well--well, well," and seemed much amused with everything in general. "By the way, Nicoline," he said suddenly, "since you're so well up in titles, I'm not 'Captain' any more now; they've sent me up this way as Lieutenant-Colonel, and my wife has just had a house left her in your town here, so we may be coming to settle down in these parts. And perhaps you'd better send letters to me through a friend in future. But we can talk about all that by and by. Well, well--well, well." And all the time he was drumming with his fingers on the table and smiling. Peer noticed that he wore gold sleeve-links and a fine gold stud in his broad white shirt-front.
And then a little packet was produced. "Hi, Peer, come and look; here's something for you." And the "something" was nothing less than a real silver watch--and Peer was quite unhappy for the moment because he couldn't dash off at once and show it to all the other boys. "There's a father for you," said the old wife, clapping her hands, and almost in tears. But the visitor patted her on the shoulder. "Father? father? H'm--that's not a thing any one can be so sure about. Hahaha!" And "hahaha" echoed the old man, still sitting with the awl in his hand. This was the sort of joke he could appreciate.
Then the visitor went out and strolled about the place, with his hands under his coat tails, and looked at the sky, and the fjord, and murmured, "Well, well--well, well," and Peer followed him about all the while, and gazed at him as he might have gazed at a star. He was to sleep in a neighbour's house, where there was a room that had a bed with sheets on it, and Peer went across with him and carried his bag. It was Martin Bruvold's parents who were to house the traveller, and people stood round staring at the place. Martin himself was waiting outside. "This a friend of yours, Peer? Here, then, my boy, here's something to buy a big farm with." This time it was a five-crown note, and Martin stood fingering it, hardly able to believe his eyes. Peer's father was something like a father.
It was a fine thing, too, to see a grand gentleman undress. "I'll have things like that some day," thought Peer, watching each new wonder that came out of the bag. There was a silver-backed brush, that he brushed his hair and beard with, walking up and down in his underclothes and humming to himself. And then there was another shirt, with red stripes round the collar, just to wear in bed. Peer nodded to himself, taking it all in. And when the stranger was in bed he took out a flask with a silver cork, that screwed off and turned into a cup, and had a dram for a nightcap; and then he reached for a long pipe with a beaded cord, and when it was drawing well he stretched himself out comfortably and smiled at Peer.
"Well, now, my boy--are you getting on well at school?"
Peer put his hands behind him and set one foot forward. "Yes--he says so--teacher does."
"How much is twelve times twelve?"
That was a stumper! Peer hadn't got beyond ten times ten.
"Do they teach you gymnastics at the school?"
"Gym--? What's that?"
"Jumping and vaulting and climbing ropes and drilling in squads-- what?"
"But isn't it--isn't that wicked?"
"Wicked! Hahaha! Wicked, did you say? So that's the way they look at things here, is it? Well, well--well, well! Hahaha! Hand me that matchbox, my boy. H'm!" He puffed away for a while in silence. Then, suddenly:
"See here, boy. Did you know you'd a little sister?"
"Yes, I know."
"Half-sister, that is to say. I didn't quite know how it was myself. But I may as well tell you, my boy, that I paid the same for you all along, the same as now. Only I sent the money by your mother, and she--well, she,