Esau spent the morning packing his bird-skins in a wooden box for their journey home, as we hardly expect to get much more in the way of specimens. Then we had another afternoon at ryper, not quite so lucky as yesterday, but still satisfactory. When we returned we found that Andreas had brought from Besse Sæter a vast pile of literature which had been accumulating at the Vaage post office for the last month. After dinner, when we were all buried in our respective letters and papers, occasionally reading out particularly interesting scraps of news, Ragnild came in and informed us that a certain Norwegian, whom we may call Mr. Fox, had come there to fish. This was a man who had done some business for us here two years ago, and we had had a little correspondence with him before coming out this year. Thinking we might have given him some trouble, and not having any great liking for his character, we naturally wished to be especially civil to him; so we asked Ragnild to bring him in and stay to interpret for us.
Presently he entered the room, and after greeting us sat down and refused to have anything to drink: this astonished us so much that it completely drove our small stock of smaller talk out of our heads. The commonplaces of polite conversation sound perfectly ridiculous when gravely uttered to an interpreter for transmission to the proper recipient, and so Ragnild seemed to think, for her translation always sounded much shorter than our flowery sentences. We tried a variety of feeble questions to which we already knew the answers, somewhat in the following style:—
‘We presume, Mr. Fox, that you like Norwegian cheese?’
‘Does your brother also like Norwegian cheese?’
‘Do you speak German?’
‘No? but your brother, we believe, plays the Norwegian german-flute?’
‘The friends of your sister’s children are also our friends. They live in England, but we believe they still like Norwegian cheese.’
‘We like much the cheese of the country, and have never suffered asphyxia from it.’
‘We shall take a small quantity with us to England for the destruction of rats;’ and so forth.
Presently Esau, getting impatient, suggested in a loud voice that we should ‘ask him some questions out of Bennett’s Phrase-book.’ Then he was covered with shame, as he feared that Ragnild would immediately translate this to Mr. Fox; but fortunately she did not.