“A clergyman?” repeated Björn, looking at him. “Beg pardon, but will you swear to that?”
The stout gentleman looked severely at him at first. But the big child was in such a good humor that day that he was quite irresistible, with his half-simple, half-roguish smile, and his good-nature, from which all severity ran off like water from a duck’s back.
In five minutes they were the best of friends. Björn told, in his own style, his story of “The Pail,” and the jolly priest laughed until his asthma nearly choked him, and before they reached the capital he had Björn’s promise to visit him next day in his little village rectory near the city.
Anders went home that night on his excursion ticket, and Björn set out alone next day for the country. Then it happened that after that day Björn undertook several excursions to Copenhagen with corresponding journeyings to the rectory, until, according to his own version, he was “caught by a petticoat.”
But this was all he would say about it. He went around wearing a broad, shining gold ring, which pinched his fat finger. How the ring was ever squeezed on that finger in the beginning was a mystery, but there it sat, and there sat Björn.
All winter long he pondered over his thoughts of marriage. The innkeeper and his wife teased him, at which he grew angry in jest and then in earnest. And then, when his anger had passed, he showed them first the photograph of a girl with a very dark face and two bright pink hat ribbons. The picture appeared to need much polishing of Björn’s coat sleeve, to give it, as he said, “the proper point of view.” He did not at all like any sport being made of this picture, but was honest enough to acknowledge that it looked more like “the portrait of a nigger than of a respectable country girl.”
During the winter he bought himself a new boat. With all necessary ceremonies this boat was christened the “Flying Fish”. But during the christening feast there was considerable of a row. The otherwise so good-natured Björn fired up about some chance teasing words, some mocking nickname given the boat. Without knowing just why the matter excited him so, he became first sarcastic, and then rude and threatening. Next day, however, he was much dissatisfied with himself, and went to consult with his friend the innkeeper, accusing himself of having forgotten his duties as host. But the innkeeper comforted him, and told him that was all the fault of his approaching marriage. A man in that condition can’t keep the right balance, and is liable to slop over either way on the slightest provocation. That was always so. The thing to do was to close the matter as soon as possible.
Björn did not answer. He muttered something about spring, and sheets and linen, etc., and then went for a sail in his new boat. She was a flyer and no mistake, he could prove that to the scoffers on shore any day!
Then spring came at last, and now “this nonsense should have an end.” He had a good new boat; all he wanted was a wife, so Björn swore to himself.
Thus the marriage came about.