A light broke in on Mamselle Lovisa. “But surely you don’t want slom for dinner, too!” she exclaimed, as if such a thing were unprecedented.
“Certainly I’ll eat slom whenever I can get it. Why do you suppose I buy it every day, if I’m not to have any myself?”
After that, they had slom morning, noon, and night; which was not a happy thought on the part of the Lieutenant. There is no denying that slom is a nice-tasting fish, but it has an unpleasant odour. Not in the sense of being tainted; but it is evil-smelling from the moment it comes out of the water. However, all that disappears in the frying. But those who have to handle the raw fish cannot escape, for it is an odour that clings. Do what you will, it stays by you. Everything you touch smells of slom.
Soon all but the Lieutenant began to sicken of slom. They took smaller portions at each meal, and sighed as they sat down at table and saw the everlasting slom set before them again.
Lieutenant Lagerlöf, however, went on buying. The fisherman who had brought the first mess, true to his word, came faithfully every day, and sometimes twice a day. But his manner was noticeably changed. He now pulled the latch-string very gently, and came in with a meek and deprecating smile. He did not set the fish on the kitchen table but left it outside the door. Though he removed his cap and said Good-day, he had to stand and wait a good half-hour before anyone seemed aware of his presence.
Pleasant as it had been for both the maids and the children to escape for a while from the old routine, they were by now so sick and tired of cleaning fish they longed to get back to their regular tasks. None of them would so much as look at the fisherman.
“I say, Lars, you’re not bringing slom again to-day, are you?” the housekeeper once asked him, as if he were offering stolen goods.
The man just blinked his eyes; he was too abashed to utter a word.
“We’ve got more fish now than we can eat,” she told him. “I don’t believe the Lieutenant wants to buy any more of that horrid stuff.” However, she knew the Lieutenant was not to be trifled with in the matter of slom, so of course she had to go in and tell him the fisherman had come.
One day the Lieutenant was out when the old man appeared, so the housekeeper peremptorily ordered him away. All in the kitchen were glad, thinking that for once they would not have to clean any slom. But as luck would have it, the old man met the Lieutenant in the lane; and the latter bought his whole bagful of fish and sent him back to the house with it.