The Captain, however, obediently put his pipe into its receptacle, and resumed his route, muttering something about Warner and the long range—his estimate of the Norwegian legislative capacity being in no way raised by the sight of certain small tubs of very dirty water standing by the side of every house door, which the Parson informed him was another precaution against fire.
“Whether there really is to be found any one, well authenticated instance of a town being set on fire by a pipe of tobacco,” said Birger, “I will not take it upon myself to say, nor whether legislating upon pipes and leaving kitchen fires to take care of themselves, be not like guarding the spigot and forgetting the bung; but the fires here, when they do occur, are really awful. You talk in your country of twenty or thirty houses as something; we burn a town at a time. Everything here is of deal, every bit of this deal is painted, and in a season like this, everything you meet with is as dry as tinder, and heated half-way to the point of combustion already. Hark to that!” as a sharp, startling crack sounded close by them; “that is the wood strained and expanded by the roasting heat of a long summer’s day, yielding now to the change of temperature; we shall have plenty of these towards morning. Light up but one of these little bonfires of houses in a moderate breeze, and see how every house in the town will be burning within half-an-hour. Six months ago, the capital of my own province, Wenersborg, contained 10,000 inhabitants, and I believe now the church and the post-house are the only two buildings left in it.”
Here Ullitz, who was leading, came to a dead halt before a substantial porch containing wood enough to build a ship, from the open door of which a bright light was streaming across the street. Taking off his hat—every Norwegian is continually taking off his hat to everybody and everything—he made a profound bow to the party in general, and with the words, “Vær saa artig,” ushered them into the house.
The room into which they entered was long and low, the ceiling supported by a mass of timbers like the decks of a ship; every part of it was planked with bright deal,—floor, walls, and roof alike,—putting one something in mind of the inside of a deal box. It was, however, well furnished with birchen tables, birchen sofas chairs and cabinets (for birch is a wood that takes a high polish), the whole having rather a French look. The floor was uncarpeted, as is the case in almost all Norwegian houses, for they have no carpet manufactory of their own, and the duty upon English woollens is so enormous that it is impossible to import them; but it was strewed with sprigs of green juniper, which diffused a pleasant fragrance; and these, in token that the family were keeping holiday, were spangled with the yellow heads of the trollius europæus, which the pretty Marie, the daughter of the house, had been gathering all the morning, and had scattered over them in honour of the expected guests.
Neither Marie nor her mother could speak one word of English—few of their women can—but their deeds spoke for them; for the hospitable board—and in this case it was literally a board, placed upon trestles, and removed when the supper was over—groaned under the weight of the good cheer. There were fish, not only in every variety, but in every variety of cookery; there was lobster-soup, and plok fiske, and whiting cakes, and long strips of bright red salmon, highly dried in juniper smoke and served up raw; enormous bowls of gröd,—a name which signifies everything semi-liquid, from rye-stirabout to gooseberry-fool;—with cream, as if the whole dairy was paraded at once,—some of it pure, some tinged with crimson streaks, from the masses of cranberry jelly that floated about it.
Nor were the liquors forgotten, which, in Norway, at least, are considered indispensable to qualify such delicacies. There was the corn brandy of the country, diffusing round it a powerful flavour of aniseed, without which no meal of any kind takes place; there, too, was French brandy, freely partaken of, but so light both in colour and taste, that it suggested ideas of a large qualification of water; there was English beer, and a light sort of clarety wine, that was drunk in tumblers. Madame Ullitz, indeed, presided over a marshalled array of tea-cups, of which she was not a little proud, for it is not every house that can boast of its tea equipage; but this was as an especial compliment to the English strangers. The tea-cups and saucers might be Staffordshire,—they had a most English look about them; but the tea was unquestionably of native growth, being little else than a decoction of dried strawberry leaves, not at all unpleasant, but by no means coming up to English ideas of tea.
“Vær saa artig,” said the lady of the house, with an inviting smile and a general bow, intimating that supper was ready; and the whole household and guests of various degrees, including Torkel the hunter, and Jacob the courier, and two or three stout serving-girls, and half-a-dozen hangers-on of one sort or other, placed themselves round the table, as indiscriminately as the viands upon it.
The house of Ullitz made a feast that day.