The captain began to puff impatiently. Ma would surely sometime get supper ready and come in, so he could get to his daughter's letters.
"You can believe he is a real pelican, that old judge down in Ryfylke! Orders them round and bellows—keeps them hot both in the office and in the house. I wonder if he won't sometime apply for an office somewhere else; for that is what he threatens to do every time he sees an office vacant, Thinka writes. Let us have the letters, Ma, and my spectacles," he exclaimed, when she came in. "The first is of November, so you shall hear about your goddaughter's coming to the governor's, Rist."
He hummed over a part of the beginning and then read:
When Great-Ola put my baggage inside the street door, I almost wanted to seat myself in the cariole and drive the three days home again; but then at once I thought, best to march straight on, as father says! I went past the servant and inside the hall door. It was very light there, and a great many outside garments and hats and caps were hanging on the pegs, and twice two servant-girls flew through with trays and teacups, without troubling themselves about me in the least. But I thought that the one who had fallen into the midst of things was your beloved daughter. My outside garments were off in a jiffy; I knocked once, twice, three times. I hardly knew what to do with myself, so I gently turned the knob. Thank heaven, there was no one there. There was another door with a portière, which I only needed to shove a little aside, and then—I was plunged right into the centre of it. Nay, how shall I describe it? It was a corner room that I had entered: there was only mahogany furniture and upholstered easy chairs, and pictures in gilded frames over the sofa; the other pictures were in dark frames; but I did not see a doit of all that, for I thought at first that it was dark. But it wasn't dark at all. There was just a shade over the astral lamp on the table, and neither more nor less than a whole company. There in the lion's den, with the married ladies on the corner sofa, sat a number of people drinking tea.
I stood there in the middle of the floor, and the reddish brown linsey-woolsey, I believed, could surely defend itself.
"Aunt Zittow," I ventured.
"Who is it?—What? Can it be my dear Inger-Johanna? My husband's niece!" was said from the table. "You have come just like a wild mountain rose, child, with the rain still on your face—and so cold!" as she touched me. But I saw very well that she had her eye on my dress. I am sure it is too long in the waist, I thought; that is what I said at home. But then I forgot the whole dress, for it was indeed my aunt, and she embraced me and said, "You are heartily welcome, my dear child! I think now a cup of good hot tea will do her good, Miss Jörgensen,—and will you ask Mina to put her room in order upstairs!" And then she seated me on a soft cushioned chair by the side of the wall.
There I sat in the twilight, with a teacup in my lap, and biscuits—how I got them I cannot remember—and thought, is it I or not I?
At first it was not easy to see those who sat about in the soft stuffed chairs; what I saw nearest to me was a piece of a foot, with spurs and a broad red stripe along the side, which rocked up and down the whole time. Now and then a head with a fine lace cap bobbed up into the light to put down a cup or to replenish it. The lamp-shade made just a round ring in the room, not a foot from the table.
Oh, how warm and delicate it was!