“I think,” she went on, “you are very ill, and if you are wise when you get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.”
I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as possible, and I said so.
“The train does not go to Bergen till night,” said she. “Stay in bed all day.” And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as a Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking pertly at the uniformed man and saying “What are you doing here?”
“Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?” asked the man sternly.
I said “No,” remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the way of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
“Then,” said he, “you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.”
“And after?” I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
“If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at a hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the streets.”
I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and I took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us through—they put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here—and James Buchanan, who had been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back to me, accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings and gave me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town that one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and even the breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things to be remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first snow of the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I do not know, but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went wandering in far-away places when there were places like this so close at home and so easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I could think of nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my hand sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was was good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden city set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board the Haakon VII., bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.