“Tell me, Wachenfeldt, you who are a judge of women—would you kiss such a little Miss Snippit?”
Colour-Sergeant von Wachenfeldt, old as he was, flushed. He struck the table with his fist, half-rose from his seat, and thundered:
“Don’t ask me such a thing! I have never kissed a homely woman.”
The ungodly persons round him broke into hilarious shrieks. Here he had been acting the part of the sage and the plain man of common sense, yet a simple little query like that had unmasked him. The old beau cavalier still survived in him. Sick and wretched, old and dilapidated as he was, let none think or assume that he would kiss a plain woman.
O Vackerfeldt! Vackerfeldt!
[[1]]Vacker is the Swedish for pretty or handsome.
[VIII
THE ORCHESTRA]
IT WAS an impromptu orchestra that played that day at Mårbacka. There was Major Ehrencrona, a Finn by birth, who in former days had lived in a palatial home and been a grand seigneur, but who now in his old age occupied a rented room at a farmhouse, where he led a dull and monotonous existence, much like that of Colour-Sergeant von Wachenfeldt. He was reputed to be a master of the French horn; but since he had become poor and lonely he had not been heard to play.