“The pretty bird upon the tree its merry notes doth sing....”
and all the rest of that verse. It sounded like an Eskimo letting off a single word of a hundred syllables or so.
“That wasn’t singing, not yet; I was just trying if I knew all the words,” explained Sivert apologetically, and proceeded to repeat the words “with music.”
A porter and one or two others came up, and grouped themselves in an attentive half-circle about the singing mannikin.
Sivert sang all the smørrebrød off one dish, and then went out with the porter to a little room where they cleaned the lamps, and here he talked of many remarkable things, helping to clean lamps the while. At last he brought out his brass tap, and polished that up till it shone. Then suddenly he stole off unobserved.
Down the street and across Andreasen’s yard, walking awkwardly and shuffling like an epileptic, his mouth running over all the time with prayers and verses of hymns.
In the little entry he stood still and laid one ear to the crack of the door, listening breathlessly.
Yes, there was Emanuel prattling away, and his mother answering with a few low words.
Was it to be his luck to find them alone? He listened again, with his head on one side, and heard now another sound—a long-drawn, sucking sound, almost like a snore, and then the rattle of a cup, repeated at regular intervals. Ah ... now he knew who was there besides!
Sivert knelt down where he stood, with his face against the door and his hands folded piously. He had knelt that way once before, when he had happened to upset a lamp. So, too, Knud, the Martyr-King, had knelt waiting for death. It was the proper thing on such occasions, and no doubt looked well. But was his hair all right?