"I was merely thinking about your uniform coat, whether the tailor has sent the pieces with it, you know—"
"You are right, you are right, Gitta," and out he rushed like a flash.
The unpacking went on in the kitchen, before the spice closet with its numerous compartments, where raisins, prunes, almonds, the different kinds of sugar, allspice, and cinnamon, were each put into their own places. Now and then fell a tribute, a prune, two almonds, three raisins, to each of the children; and it could not be denied that this load from the city was like a foretaste of Christmas Eve.
At first the captain was intensely interested in getting hold of the ink bottles, the tobacco, and the strong wares which were to be kept in the cellar—everything else must be put aside for them. And then he flew in and out, with one bill or another in his hand and a quill pen full of ink, to compare with the general bill which his wife had nailed up on the upper door of the spice closet.
"Ma, can you conceive such extortion?" stopping suddenly before the bill, which still finally was always found to be right, and then turning thoughtfully round again, while he dried his pen in his chocolate-colored every-day wig.
His plethoric, vociferous, somewhat confused nature always became furious when he saw a bill; it operated like a red cloth on a bull, and when, as now, all the half year's bills came storming down on him at once, he both roared and bellowed. It was an old story for his wife, who had acquired a remarkable skill in taking the bull by the horns.
The wrongs, which thus he did not suffer, seemed nevertheless to awaken an increasing storm of resentment in him. With a violent tug at the door-latch, and his wig awry, he would come suddenly in, exclaiming,—"Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, seventeen pence!—seventy-five—dollars—three shillings—and seventeen pence!—it is almost enough to make one crazy. And so you ordered citron—citron,"—he put on a falsetto tone, and laughed out of pure rage. "He, he, he, he!—now have we the means for that? And then, almond soap for the guest-chamber!" This last came in a deep, suppressed, gloomy bass. "I cannot understand how you could have hit on that!"
"My dear, that was thrown in. Don't you see that it isn't carried out for anything?"
"Thrown in—oh, thrown in—yes, there you see how they cheat! Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, and seventeen pence—plainly that is enough to be frightened at. Where shall I find the money?"
"But you have already found it, Jäger!—Remember the servants," she whispered quickly. It was a quiet prayer to put off the rest of the outburst till later in the afternoon, between themselves.