Two days after, Jochen Prebrow was standing before the door of his house, just after his second breakfast, looking out to sea through a long spy-glass, which with his left hand he rested against the tall flag-staff that stood before the house. Worthy Jochen might often be found in the same spot, engaged in the same occupation It was not that he sought or hoped to find anything unusual out at sea; but in leisure moments the spy-glass, which usually rested on two crooked bars close beside the door under the shelter of the projecting roof, afforded an excellent amusement, even if, as at this moment, there was nothing to be seen on the sea except the waves, here and there crested with foam, dancing merrily in the morning breeze.
But to-day the worthy Jochen did not even see the foam-crested waves; he saw absolutely nothing at all; yet when, at the end of five minutes, he put down and closed the spy-glass, his broad face wore an expression as anxious as if he had perceived a large ship, driven by a north-east storm on the Wiessow cliffs, and his neighbor Pilot Bonsak had said she could not be saved.
And the same anxious expression rested upon the plump face of his Stine, who had just appeared in the doorway, and with both hands, usually so busy, idly folded under her apron, began to gaze at the blue morning sky and shining white clouds scattered over it, without even noticing her Jochen, who was standing scarcely six paces away.
"No, no," sighed Stine.
"Yes, yes," said Jochen.
"Jochen, how you frightened me!"
"And it is frightful, when one thinks of it," said Jochen.
He had opened the spy-glass again, and was evidently about to resume his former occupation; but Stine took it out of his hands, put it in its place, and said in a somewhat irritated tone, "You do nothing but look through the old thing, and I so worried that I hardly know whether I'm on my head or my heels."
"Oh! but if you don't know, Stine"--
"How am I to know? Why are you my husband, if I, poor creature, am expected to know everything? And she has just asked me again whether the Swede is not yet here. Poor girl! To go all that long way in such a nutshell of a boat! And who knows whether the people over yonder will want her. They are only fourth or fifth cousins."