It was also a truly refreshing enjoyment for me, as if looking into the kingdom of youth, awakening many thoughts, to talk with him, the two evenings this winter when he accompanied me, an old woman, home from the governor's (for him, I have no doubt, a very small pleasure), all the way out to the old town, when otherwise I should have been obliged to go anxiously with my servant-girl and a lantern.
"Bah! nobody will attack her," growled the captain, bored.
Chapter IX
The captain had had a genuine drive in the service ever since summer, when he and the lieutenant inspected the storehouse for the tents, together with the arsenal and the guns in the levying districts. Then the military exercises, and finally now the meeting of the commissioners of conscription. There had been tolerably lively goings-on at the inn in the principal parish the last two or three evenings with the army doctor, the solicitor Sebelow, tall Buchholtz, Dorff the sheriff's officer, and the lieutenants.
But the result was splendid in so far that, instead of the bay horse, he was now driving home with a fine three or four-year-old before the cariole, with a white star on the forehead and white stockings that almost promised to be a match for Svarten if—if—it were not a bolter.
It had just now, when the old beggar woman rose up from the ditch by the wayside, shown something in the eyes and ears which it certainly had concealed during all the three days of the session. He had at last even shot over its head to test it, without so much as the horse giving a start.
It would be too mean, after the doctor and First Lieutenant Dunsack had been unanimous in the same opinion as he about the beast, and he, besides, had given the horse-dealer twenty-five dollars to boot.
But now it trotted off with the cariole very steadily and finely. The little inclination to break into a canter was only unmannerliness and a little of coltish bad habits which stuck to it still, and would disappear by driving.