Part 26 (1/2)

The applause was hearty and unanimous.

”Bravo, Hans!” came a deep voice from the gallery. All turned to see who had spoken. Ah, there--it was Bramsen, standing up with both hands outstretched and clapping thunderously.

Amanda flushed with embarra.s.sment, and nudged her father to make him stop. But he snapped out impatiently, ”You leave me alone!” and went on clapping.

Among the numerous extras was a ”Ballad theme with variations,” which the more exacting critics considered somewhat out of place. One there was, however, who thought otherwise, and that was Amanda. The soft, swaying rhythm of ”The Little Fisher-Maid” filled her with delight, and she clapped as enthusiastically as her father had done.

”Father, I think I've learned something from that concert this evening,” said William, as they walked home.

”Well, my boy, and what was that?”

”Why, that genius is like pure gold; if Nature hasn't put it there it's no use trying to make it.”

”You're right, my son. And sensible people don't try. It's no good setting up to do the work of your Creator. What do you say, Banker?”

”Eh, what's that?” Hermansen was walking arm in arm with Mrs.

Rantzau, and the pair of them were evidently oblivious of all but each other.

”I say, the best thing we can do in this life's to live like sensible people.”

”_Errors and omissions excepted_,” answered the banker, and he pressed his fiancee's hand long and tenderly.

XII

OLD NICK

”This where Petter Nekkelsen lives?”

The speaker was an awkward-looking lad, acting as postman in Strandvik for the first time.

”No, you muddlehead.” Old Lawyer Nickelsen held out his hand for the letters. ”This is where Peder, comma, N. Nickelsen, full stop, lives.

And a nice lot of louts they've got going around, that can't learn to call folk by their proper names!”

Thor Smith, the magistrate's clerk, was of the same opinion, but liked a touch of honest dialect occasionally; he was not unwilling on occasion to contradict Old Nick.

”Honest dialect, indeed! Rank impertinence, I call it! But wait a bit, young fellow; in a few years' time you'll be wis.h.i.+ng these understrappers at the North Pole, or some other cool place.”

The two men filled their pipes, and took up their position on the veranda of Lawyer Nickelsen's house, continuing their discussion as to the merits of natural simplicity, concerning which they held diametrically opposite views.

The lawyer was a bachelor of sixty-seven, and kept what he called a home for young men of decent behaviour and tolerable manners. In particular he had, ever since he first came to the place forty-three years earlier, kept open house for the magistrate's clerks successively, taking them under his paternal care and protection from their first entering on their duties in the town.

Smith and Nickelsen sat on the veranda, but somehow the discussion fell curiously flat. Smith was unusually absent and uncommunicative, to such a degree that Nickelsen at last asked him point blank what was the matter.

”Oh, nothing. H'm. I say, Nickelsen, that fellow Prois--he's an intolerable old curmudgeon.”

”Oho, so that's the trouble! Won't have you for a son-in-law, what?”