[CHAPTER I.][C]
Fröken Knudsgaard pretended to grumble a good deal at having to leave Copenhagen and go to Norway with Gerda and Ejnar. But there was no help for it. It was a time-honoured custom that she spent the whole summer with her nephew and niece. It was true that they saw each other constantly all through the year, for Tante lived opposite the Orstedpark, and the botanists, who lived at Frederiksberg, passed that way every time they went to the Botanic Museum and Library, and would never have neglected to run in for a chat. Sometimes, also, they lunched with her in her cosy little home, where, in the spring, she saw the limes of the Boulevard unfold their tender leaves, and where in summer she watched the sun disappear in the north-west behind the trees. It was indeed a pretty little home, made, so she said, wickedly comfortable by her Clifford's kindness.
But these fragments of companionship were not considered enough by the botanists; and summer was the time when they claimed Tante for their own, whether she liked it or not. But of course she liked it; only she felt it to be her duty as a healthy human being to have a permanent grievance.
"Don't talk to me about giving up my grievances," she said. "All right-minded people ought to have them. Rise above them, indeed! Thank you! I don't want to rise above anything!"
However, after the usual formality of grumbling, Tante was charmed at the prospect of having a change. Ejnar had set his heart on going to the Gudbrandsdal to find a particular kind of shrub which grew only in one district of that great valley. He was a gentle fellow, except where his botanical investigations were concerned. But if any one thwarted him over his work, he became quite violent. Tante Knudsgaard used to look at him sometimes when he was angry, and say in her quaint way:
"Kjaere, one would think you were an anarchist instead of a harmless botanist. One would think you spent your days with dynamite instead of with innocent flowers and mosses, which don't explode."
Gerda, also a botanist, and just as clever and distinguished as her husband, wished specially to go up to Tromsö, to find some particular kind of saxifrage, growing nowhere in Europe except on the Tromsdalstind.
But Tante struck.
"No," she said. "You don't get me to go up there within the Arctic circle. I've had quite enough of icebergs this spring with my two poor icebergs in England. Poor darlings! I suppose they have reached America by now. I ought to be hearing soon."
"I cannot imagine why you made them go so far," Gerda said.