“I’m airing the room after him,” answered Miss Betty.
“Come, come, Betty, you are really too hard upon him. But I must admit that the young gentleman did not improve upon closer acquaintance. I don’t understand young people nowadays.”
Thereupon the captain retired to his bedroom, after giving his daughter the usual evening exhortation, “Now don’t sit up too long.”
When she was left alone, Miss Betty put out the lamp, moved the flowers away from the corner window, and seated herself on the window-sill with her feet upon a chair.
On clear moonlight evenings she could descry a little strip of the fiord between two high houses. It was not much; but it was a glimpse of the great highway that leads to the south, and to foreign lands.
And her desires and longings flew away, following the same course which has wearied the wings of so many a longing—down the narrow fiord to the south, where the horizon is wide, where the heart expands, and the thoughts grow great and daring.
And Miss Betty sighed as she gazed at the little strip of the fiord which she could see between the two high houses.—She gave no thought, as she sat there, to Cousin Hans; but he thought of Miss Schrappe as he passed with hasty steps up the street.
Never had he met a young lady who was less to his taste. The fact that he had been rude to her did not make him like her better. We are not inclined to find those people amiable who have been the occasion of misbehavior on our own part. It was a sort of comfort to him to repeat to himself, “Who would want to marry her?”
Then his thoughts wandered to the charmer who was to leave town to-morrow. He realized his fate in all its bitterness, and he felt a great longing to pour forth the sorrow of his soul to a friend who could understand him.
But it was not easy to find a sympathetic friend at that time of night.