'Good Master Walter, we confess
It's wrong to wake you up like this,
But hear our plea, we pray you, first;
We're simply perishing with thirst,
And since you're there, and know the stuff,
Pray let us have it—quantum suff!'
"Old Walter was furious. 'What the devil!' he cried out. 'Is the fellow mad?'
"I dragged Carl Henrik down from the steps, and went myself, hat in hand, and begged his pardon; said we were awfully sorry, we thought it was the assistant on duty. 'Well, and what then—is anyone ill?' 'Why, no, sir, I'm glad to say, but it's my birthday to-day, that's all.'—'Yesterday, you mean,' roars out Carl Henrik from below.—'It's my birthday, and I only wanted to ask if you'd let us have a little acid for the punch.'
"'I'll give you punch,' said the old man, and landed out at me, sending me headlong down the steps into the arms of the poet; Carl Henrik urging me to bear up bravely against what he called the blows of fate.
"I met Petrea out next day, but the moment she caught sight of me she slipped across the street into the flower shop opposite. I waited outside a full hour, but no sight of Petrea—she must have gone out the back way so as not to meet me. Well, that was the end of the first Punic war, my dear Smith, and I left Kongsberg with a wounded heart—though I'm bound to say it healed up again all right pretty soon."
Smith had brightened up considerably by now, but, try as he would, he could not admit that Old Nick's experience as related was analogous to the present situation.
"I tell you, Nickelsen, this is a serious affair; as a matter of fact, we're—we're secretly engaged, Tulla and I."
"Uf!" said Old Nick; he had nearly broken the neck of a bottle of old Pontet Canet he was opening. Old Nick drank a glass, sniffed at the wine, put on a serious air and said solemnly:
"It's getting cloudy."
Smith hung his head; he found the situation cloudy.