You should have seen him! Hands out of his pockets, and at once he sat up before her, as straight as a candle.
"If all were like your ladyship, I would recommend making calls," said he, "for you are an honest woman."
"Woman! We say, lady."
"I mean an honest governor's lady; besides, I don't at all say a good-natured!" and then he shook that great brown lock of hair down over his forehead.
I do not need to wish for any portrait of you, for I lie thinking, in the evenings, that I am at home. I see father so plainly, walking up and down the room whistling, and then starting off up the office stairs; and I pull your hair, Jörgen! and poke your head down into the geography, so that I get you after me, and we run round, in one door and out another, up and down in the house. Nay, I long horribly at times. But I must not let aunt see that; it would be ungrateful. She does not believe that one can exist anywhere but in a city.
And then there are a lot of things which I have been obliged to draw a black mark through, because I don't at all understand them. Only think, mother! Aunt says, that it may at most be allowable to say that we have cows at home; but I must not presume to say that any one of them has a calf! I should like to know how they think we get new cows, when we kill the old ones for Christmas?
Here the captain interpolated some inarticulate noises. But an expression of anxiety came over Ma's face, and she said faintly:
"That is because, unfortunately, we have not been able to keep the children sufficiently away from the servants' room, and from everything they hear there."
"You see, madam," declared the doctor, "in the city people are so proper that a hen hardly dares to lay eggs—It is only the products of the efforts of the land that they are willing to recognize, I can tell you."
"No," the captain put in, "it is not advisable for a poor mare to be so indiscreet as to have a foal there."