She spoke of the former Otto and of the present one—he was become so Copenhagenish, so refined and nice, as well in the cut of his clothes as in his manners; yet she still found an opportunity of giving him a little hint to further refinement. Only think! he took the sugar for his coffee with his fingers!
“But where are the sugar-tongs, the massive silver sugar-tongs?” asked she. “Maren, dost thou allow him to take the sugar with his fingers?”
“That is more convenient!” answered Otto. “I do that always.”
“Yes, but if strangers had been here,” said the hostess, in a friendly but teaching tone, “we must, like that grand lady you know of, have thrown the sugar out of the window.”
“In the higher circles, where people have clean fingers, they make use of them!” said Otto. “There would be no end of it if one were to take it with the sugar-tongs.”
“They are of massive silver!” said the lady, and weighed them in her hand.
Toward evening Rosalie went into the garden under the plum trees.
“These, also, remind me of my mountains,” said she; “this is the only fruit which will properly flourish there. Lemvig lies, like La Locle, in a valley,” and she pointed, smiling, to the surrounding sand-hills. “How entirely different it is here from what it is at home on thy grandfather’s estate! There I have been so accustomed to solitude, that it is almost too lively for me here. One diversion follows another.”
It was precisely this which Otto did not like. These amusements of the small towns wearied him, and he could not delight himself with them, no longer mingle in this life.
He wished to set out early the following morning. It would be too exhausting to drive along the dry road in the sun’s heat, they all declared; he must wait until the afternoon, then it would be cooler; it was, also, far pleasanter to travel in the night. Rosalie’s prayers decided him. Thus, after dinner and coffee, the horses should be put into the carriage.