She found him pens and ink, tore a soiled sheet off the blotting-pad, drew up the blind so as to let in just enough sunshine, and then left him to his translating.
“What a strange girl she is,” he thought to himself. “As frank and outspoken as a boy, and yet with all sorts of little tender touches about her. Sigrid would like her; they did take to one another at Balholm, I remember.”
Then, with a bitter recollection of one who had eclipsed all others during that happy week on the Sogne Fjord, the hard look came back to his face, and taking up his pen he began to work doggedly at Herr Sivertsen’s manuscript.
The next morning his new life began: he turned his back on the past and deliberately made his downward step on the social ladder, which nevertheless meant an upward step on the ladder of honesty and success. Still there was no denying that the loss of position chafed him sorely; he detested having to treat such a man as James Horner as his master and employer; he resented the free-and-easy tone of the other men employed on the premises. Mr. Horner, who was the sort of man who would have patronized an archangel for the sake of showing off his own superior affability, unluckily chanced to be in the shop a good deal during that first week, and the new hand received a large share of his notice. Frithiof’s native courtesy bore him up through a good deal, but at last his pride got the better of him, and he made it so perfectly apparent to the bumptious little man that he desired to have as little to do with him as possible, that James Horner’s bland patronage speedily changed to active dislike.
“What induced you to choose that Falck in Smith’s place?” he said to Mr. Boniface, in a grumbling tone. He persisted in dropping the broad “a” in Frithiof’s name, and pronouncing it as if it rhymed with “talc”—a sound peculiarly offensive to Norwegian ears.
“He is a friend of Roy’s,” was the reply. “What is it that you dislike about him? He seems to me likely to prove very efficient.”
“Oh, yes; he has his wits about him, perhaps rather too much so, but I can’t stand the ridiculous airs the fellow gives himself. Order him to do anything, and he’ll do it as haughtily as though he were master and I servant; and as for treating him in a friendly way it’s impossible; he’s as stand-offish as if he were a Crœsus instead of a poor beggar without a penny to bless himself with.”