The young man rose hurriedly, but sat down again like a spring ready to jump up out of a chair: he had been in too great haste.
"In the parlor--some sort of fellow who wants to talk with me?" It was out on the stairs that some one was speaking.
A moment or two later, and the captain appeared in the door.
"I must beg you to excuse me, Captain. I have unfortunately, unfortunately"--here he began to stammer; bad luck would have it that one of the two young girls whom he had seen in the summer-house, the dark one, came in after her father; and so it would not do--"come over the mountain," he continued. "You will understand that one cannot exactly appear in the best plight." The last came in a tone of forced ease.
The captain at that moment did not appear exactly agreeably surprised.
"Arent Grip!" rejoined the captain, looking at him. "Grip! the same phiz and eyes! You can never be the son of Perpetuum--cadet at Lurleiken? He is a farmer, or proprietor I suppose he calls himself, somewhere among the fjords."
"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath, when the pipes sprung a leak."
Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.
"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down from the mountains. Sit down.--And what is now your--your occupation or profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around the floor.
"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here thus without knowing you--"
"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father also had trouble with his examinations."