“I hope you can see now, at any rate. And now, for Heaven’s sake, make haste and get that fowl done. I’ve asked Vang to supper.”
“But, Egholm! You don’t mean to say....” Fru Egholm almost screamed.
“Beginning again, are you?” he said threateningly. But at sight of her face, bruised and already colouring from his recent blows, he turned away.
“We must do something for him. He’s been a help to me from the first day I came. And he’s got a miserable home.”
“We’ve neither knives nor forks—we haven’t even plates.” Fru Egholm dared not say too much just now, but hurried to unpack a box, that the contents might speak for her. There were a few cups without handles, five or six plates, some of them soup-plates, but no two alike. One had a pattern of flowers, another birds; a third was ornamented with a landscape. Two of the knives lacked handles, and nearly all the forks were one prong short.
“There! I don’t know what you think?”
Egholm was on the point of breaking out again, but suddenly he laughed.
“Oh, an elegant dinner service. Splendid! splendid!” And he danced about the floor.
“We haven’t a single dish, or a tureen. And his father keeps a real hotel—we can’t serve it up in the saucepan.”