Peter Oiland gave a formal greeting to the company assembled as he entered; those nearest politely made way for him.
"It's a hard life, teaching," observed a stout little man with a florid, clean-shaven face and glistening black hair brushed forward over his ears. "Tells on the nerves."
"You find it so?" put in Peter Oiland. "Well, now, it all depends on how you take it—as the young man said when he took a kiss in the dark."
There was a somewhat awkward silence; the company seemed rather in doubt as to the speaker's sympathy with their ideas.
Presently the sea began to make itself felt, and Peter Oiland found occasion to relate the anecdote of the old lady who had been in to Christiania for a new set of false teeth, and, being sea-sick on the way back, dropped them overboard; next day the local papers had an account of a big cod just caught, with false teeth in its mouth!
A smile—a very faint one—greeted the story, and the passengers relapsed into their customary seriousness, not without occasional glances between one and another: what sort of a fellow was this they had got on board?
"H'm!" thought Peter Oiland. "Have another try; wake them up a bit. Must be a queer sort of party if I can't."
Just then Sukkestad appeared in the doorway.
"This way, this way, if you please," shouted Peter gaily. "Gentlemen, my friend and colleague, Bukkestad—beg pardon, Sukkestad; slip of the tongue, you understand. Come along in, old man! Jolly evening we had at your place last night—first-rate fun."
Sukkestad did not know whether to laugh or cry, or take himself off and have done with it. The fellow must be mad!