“Pooh!” said Peer scornfully. “Do you think I can’t manage to run that village smithy and live here too! Come along, Merle.” And he took her hand and drew her into the house again.
It was useless to try to resist. He dragged her from room to room, furnishing as he went along. “This room here is the dining-room—and that’s the big reception-room; this will be the study—that’s a boudoir for you. . . . Come now; to-morrow we’ll go into Christiania and buy the furniture.”
Merle gasped for breath. He had got so far by this time that the furnishing was complete and they were installed. They had a governess already, and he was giving parties too. Here was the ballroom. He slipped an arm round her waist and danced round the room with her, till she was carried away by his enthusiasm, and stood flushed and beaming, while all she had dreamed of finding some day out in the wide world seemed suddenly to unfold around her here in these empty rooms. Was this really to be her home? She stopped to take breath and to look around her.
Late that evening Peer sat at the hotel with a note-book, working the thing out. He had bought Loreng; his father-in-law had been reasonable, and had let him have the place, lands and woods and all, for the ridiculous price he had paid himself. There was a mortgage of thirty thousand crowns on the estate. Well, that might stand as it was, for the bulk of Peer’s money was tied up in Ferdinand Holm’s company.
A few days after he carried Merle off to the capital, leaving the carpenters and painters hard at work at Loreng.
One day he was sitting alone at the hotel in Christiania—Merle was out shopping—when there was a very discreet knock at the door.
“Come in,” called Peer. And in walked a middle-sized man, of thirty or more, dressed in a black frock-coat with a large-patterned vest, and his dark hair carefully combed over a bald patch on the crown. He had a red, cheery face; his eyes were of the brightest blue, and the whole man breathed and shone with good humour.
“I am Uthoug junior,” said the new-comer, with a bow and a laugh.
“Oh—that’s capital.”
“Just come across from Manchester—beastly voyage. Thanks, thanks—I’ll find a seat.” He sat down, and flung one striped trouser-leg over the other.