“He lives by carrying burdens. And what do you want, Knut, for the job?”
“A dollar.”
“That’s too much.”
I did not think so, and the bargain was struck, and I took leave of the vinegar-cruet, who was said to be a chosen vial of pulpit declamation.
What a set of bores or burrs my host the Lehnsman and his family were. They would not let me alone in the loft, which was frightfully hot, and with no openable window. Up tramped first the old man, with half-a-dozen loutish sons, then followed a hobbling old beldam, leaning on a stick, and attended by Brida, a young peasant lass, the only redeeming feature in the group. Fancy arriving at a place dog-tired, and a dozen people surrounding you in the foreground, and asking a hundred questions, with a perspective of white heads bobbing about, and appearing and disappearing through the doorway in the middle distance.
My only chance was my pencil; that is the weapon to repel such intruders. Not that I used it aggressively, as those hopeful students did their styles (see Fox’s Martyrs), digging the sharp points into their Dominie’s body. Taking out my sketch-book, I deliberately singled out one of the phalanx, and commenced transferring his proportions to the paper. This manœuvre at once routed the assailants, and they retired. Before long, however, the old gent stole in, and prowled stealthily around the fortress before he summoned it to surrender. I parried all his questions, and he departed. His place was then supplied by his eldest son, who was equally unsuccessful, but whom I made useful in boiling some water for tea. The only thing approaching to a tea-pot was a shallow kettle, a foot in diameter. The butter of Roldal is celebrated, and compared to the Herregaard butter of Denmark, but the pile of it brought in by the landlord’s son, on a lordly dish, was stale and nauseous. As nothing was to be got out of me, he, too, disappeared, and I was left in peace and quietness. Another yet! Horrible sight! the old Hecate herself again rises into the loft—not one of “the soft and milky rabble” of womankind, spoken of by the poet, but a charred and wrinkled piece of humanity—all shrivelled and toothless, came and stood over me as I sat at meat.
“Who are you? You shall tell me. Whence do you come from?”
“Christiansand.”
“But are you Baarneföd (born) there?”
At the same time she hobbled to a great red box, with various names painted on it, and as a kind of bait, I suppose, produced a quaint silver spoon for my use, which she poised suspiciously in her hand like a female Euclio, as if she was fearful I should swallow it.