He laughed pleasantly again, like one who is accustomed to dealing with highly eccentric persons. “And pray, sir, what will you do?”
“Bennett,” said I, “have you, or could you get for me, two or perhaps three pounds of the copper coins öre—pronounced ouray, I believe?”
“I have a barrel of ’em at your disposal.”
“But I want only enough to fill up my outside pockets. And could you supply me with twenty or thirty notes of one krone each?”
“I understand,” said he, “and I am sure it will work. There is no language like ready money, after all. But it is the last that most people think of trying.”
It took but a few minutes to cash a draft on my bankers in London. I received enough copper öre packed in small rouleaux to fill two pockets, and stuffed my wallet with single paper kroner. Then I knew I was prepared for any emergency arising from ignorance of the Norwegian tongue. Besides these smaller resources, there was a due provision of larger currency which can never come amiss.
CHAPTER XXXI. A BABY KUDSK—TYRI-FIORD—HÖNEFOS—LAKE SPIRELLEN—DINNER AT A SANITARIUM.
Next morning (August 9th) we made an early start, with Hönefos as the objective point for the day, the hotel there having been highly recommended to us. The postboy (kudsk) who was to drive to the first station on the route, two hours distant, was not a boy, but a man. And that was a damper upon the enthusiasm with which we should have set out; for all the authorities on Norwegian traveling assure one that the drivers are invariably real boys—when they are not girls. Much of the charm, and most of the risk, which is itself a delightful excitement to some people, of carriage-riding in Norway, is always said to consist in the fact that you are in charge of a joyous child, whose infantile ways divert you, when there is nothing else worth looking at. As we had already journeyed over a part of the road in a little ride we had taken out of Christiania some days before, we would have been glad to extract some amusement from the driver. At the next station there would be a change on the box-seat, and we were hoping for somebody a little smaller and less obstructive of the view, than postboy number one. But we were not prepared for what happened. I had settled for my mileage up to that point with the skyddsskaffer (station-master), paid the overgrown postboy the gratuity in öre which usage decrees to him, the tired horses had been taken from the pole and fresh ones put on, and we were impatient to be off again, when a little chap climbed up to the box-seat. He looked six or eight years old. I supposed he was the youngest brother of the driver, who had not yet appeared. His toes, by stretching, just touched the dash-board. The child was so very young that we thought of asking him to take part of a spare seat inside if he wished to ride to the next station. We waited five minutes for the driver, when, what was our amazement, to see the reins handed up to the mite! He took them in his baby-hand like an old coachman. Then he prattled something in Norwegian. In reply he received a whip-stock with about three inches of lash. He looked at it scornfully, and flourished it in the air to show that it would not “crack.” The poor little fellow wanted a real whip, with a thong about ten feet long, which he could snap as he passed every house, like his father and his grandfather, who were somewhere on the road that same day. But the station-master had no better whip, or was unwilling to trust the child with one. He ordered the carriage on. I saw a tear steal down the cheek of Toddlekins, and heard an infantile sob, but he suddenly checked himself and made a scarcely audible noise with his lips, and the horses, hearing that signal to go, flew down the road. I stood erect for a while, ready to jump to the box-seat and seize the reins; but in a very few moments both the mite and the horses had my entire confidence.