“None of your games with me, thank you,” she said sharply.
“What?” said Egholm in surprise. “You won’t? I warrant you the leg will be all in a glow in no time. And then it’s a practically certain cure.”
He waved the thing enticingly before her, exhibiting it from all sides, and bending it to show the venomous lips. “Why, I wouldn’t mind putting it on myself.”
But Madam Hermansen’s face was dark and discouraging; she set about resolutely wrapping her tender spot in all its armour of rags and bandages.
“And quite right of you, I’m sure, Madam Hermansen,” said Fru Egholm.
“Well, well, we must hit on something else,” said Egholm. “I won’t give it up. But it must be a natural cure in any case. The sources of Nature are manifold.”
And by way of restoring good humour all round, he began telling the story of the furniture from Gammelhauge.
“Isn’t that an elegant chair I’ve got there? Do for a throne; look at the coronet on the back—it’s almost on my own head now as I sit here. I’ve just the feel of an old nobleman, a general, or a landed aristocrat, in this chair. Let’s bring it up in front of the glass. What’s the use of sitting on a throne with a coronet on your bald pate when you can’t see yourself?”
“Now I suppose you’ll be putting a new glass in the mirror—another twenty—thirty—forty—fifty kroner gone, but that’s nothing, of course,” cried Madam Hermansen.
“Not in the least, my dear lady. In this glass it was that the splendidly attired knights and ladies surveyed their magnificence before the feasting commenced.”