"He is my father, Captain."
"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath, when the pipes sprung a leak."
Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.
"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down from the mountains. Sit down.—And what is now your—your occupation or profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around the floor.
"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here thus without knowing you—"
"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father also had trouble with his examinations."
"I have not the fractional part of my father's brains, but with what I have, they gave me this year laudabilis praeceteris."
"Son of my friend, Fin Arentzen Grip!" He uttered each one of the names with a certain tender recognition. "Your father was, all things considered, a man of good ability, not to say a little of a genius,—when he failed in his officer's examination, it was all due to his irregular notions. Well, so you are his son! Yes, he wrote many a composition for me—the pinch was always with the compositions, you see."
"And, Captain," began the young man again earnestly, now in a louder and more decided tone, "since I can thus, without further ceremony, confidently address you—"