"You can tell Ma," said the captain, when Inger-Johanna again came in with her taller, overgrown sister, "that it is Student Arent Grip, son of my old delightful comrade at the Military School."
The result of this last message was that the contemplated plate with a glass and bread and butter was changed to a little lunch for him and the captain, spread out on a tray.
The old bread-basket of red lacquer was filled with slices of black, sour bread, the crusts of which were cracked off. More's the pity, Ma declared, it had been spoiled in the baking, and the gray, heavy crust was due to the fact that so much of the grain on the captain's farm last year was harvested before it was ripe.
The student showed the sincerity of his forbearance of these defects through an absolutely murderous appetite. The prudential lumps of salt, which studded the fresh mountain butter with pearly tears in a superfluous abundance, he had a knack of dodging boldly and incisively, which did not escape admiring eyes; only a single short stroke of his knife on the under side of the bread and butter, and the lumps of salt rained and pattered over the plate.
"You will surely have some dried beef? I guess you have not had much to eat to-day. Go and get some more, Thinka. A little dram with the cheese, what? You can believe that we tested many a good old cheese in the den at your father's, and when we had a spree, we sent for it, and it circulated round from one party to another; and then the apples from Bergen which he got by the bushel by freighting-vessel from home! He was such a greenhorn, and so kind hearted—too confiding for such rascals as we! Oh, how we hunted through his closet and boxes!—and then we did our exercises at the same time; it was only his that the teacher corrected through the whole class." The captain emptied the second part of his long dram. "Ah!" He held his glass up against the light, and looked through it, as he was accustomed to. "But nevertheless, there was something odd about him, you know; you must see that such a one, straight from the country, does not fit in at once. Never forget when he first lectured us about perpetual motion. It was done with only five apples in a wheel, he said, and the apples must be absolutely mathematically exact. It was that which got out and ruined him, so people came to—yes, you know—comment on it, and make fun of him; and that hung on till the examination."
The student wriggled about.
The young ladies, who were sitting with their sewing by the window, also noticed how he had now forgotten himself; during the whole time he had kept one boot under the chair behind the other in order to conceal the sole of his shoes gaping wide open. They were in good spirits, and hardly dared to look at each other—son of a man who was called Perpetuum, was a cadet, and gave the cows a bath. Father was dreadfully amusing when there were strangers present.
"Not a moment's doubt that there were ideas—but there was something obstinate about him. To come, as he did, straight from the farm, and then to begin to dispute with the teacher about what is in the book, never succeeds well, especially in physics in the Military School. And you can believe that was a comedy."
"Then I will bet my head that it was not my father who was wrong, Captain."
"Hm, hm—naturally yes, his father to a dot," he mumbled—"Hm, well, you have got praeceteris all the same,—will you have a drop more?" came the hospitable diversion.