The Family at Gilje. Jonas Lie

the card-table. "Only look at the next box under the lead cover, and you will find some cut-leaf tobacco, Bremen leaf, as black and high flavored as you want. Up here it is only to the goats that we can offer that kind, and to the folk who come from Bergen; they use strong tobacco there to dry out the wet fog."

      The door opened, and the three girls and their little brother came in, carrying the tray with the glasses and the jug of hot water, which task they seemed to have apportioned among themselves according to the rules for the procession at the Duke of Marlborough's funeral, where, as is known, the fourth one carried nothing.

      The tall, blond Kathinka marched at the head with the tray and glasses with the clinking teaspoons in them. She attempted the feat of curtseying, while she was carrying the tray, and blushed red when it was ready to slip, and the lieutenant was obliged to take hold of it to steady it.

      He immediately noticed the next oldest, a brunette with long eyelashes, who was coming with the smoking water-jug on a plate, while the youngest, Thea, was immediately behind her with the sugar-bowl.

      "But, my dear Peter Jäger," exclaimed Rönnow, astonished at the appearance of his friend's almost grown-up daughters, "when have you picked up all this? You wrote once about some girls—and a boy who was to be baptized."

      At the same moment Jörgen came boldly forward, strutting over the floor, and made his best bow, while he pulled his bristly yellow locks instead of his cap.

      "What is your name?"

      "Jörgen Winnecken von Zittow Jäger."

      "That was heavy! You are a perfect mountain boy, are you not? Let me see you kick as high as your name."

      "No, but as high as my cap," answered Jörgen, going back on the floor and turning a cart-wheel.

      "Bold fellow, that Jörgen!" And with that, as Jörgen had done his part, he stepped back into obscurity. But while the gentlemen were pouring out the arrack punch at the folding-table, he kept his eyes uninterruptedly fastened on Lieutenant Mein. It was the lieutenant's regularly trimmed black moustache, which seemed to him like bits that he had not got into his mouth properly.

      "Oh, here, my girl!" said Rönnow, turning to one of the daughters, who stood by his side while he was putting some sugar into the steaming glass, "what is your name?"

      "Inger-Johanna."

      "Yes, listen"—he spoke without seeing anything else than the arm he touched to call her attention. "Listen, my little Inger-Johanna! In the breast pocket of my fur coat out in the hall there are two lemons—I didn't believe that fruit grew up here in the mountains, Peter!—two lemons."

      "No, let me! Pardon me!" and the lieutenant flew gallantly.

      Captain Rönnow looked up, astonished. The dark, thin girl, in the outgrown dress which hung about her legs, and the three thick, heavy, black cables, braided closely for the occasion, hanging down her back, stood distinct in the light before him. Her neck rose, delicately shaped and dazzlingly fresh, from the blue, slightly low-cut, linsey-woolsey dress, and carried her head proudly, with a sort of swan-like curve.

      The captain grasped at once why the lieutenant was so alert.

      "Bombs and grenades, Peter!" he exclaimed.

      "Do you hear that, Ma?" the captain grunted slyly.

      "Up here among the peasants the children—more's the pity—grow up without any other manners than those that they learn of the servants," sighed the mother. "Don't stand so bent over, Thinka, straighten up."

      Thinka straightened up her overgrown blond figure and tried to smile. She had the difficult task of hiding a plaster on one side of her chin, where a day or two before she had fallen down through the cellar trap-door in the kitchen.

      Soon the three gentlemen sat comfortably at their cards, each one smoking his pipe and with a glass of hot arrack punch by his side. Two moulded tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks stood on the card-table and two on the folding-table; they illuminated just enough so that you could see the almanac, which hung down by a piece of twine from a nail under the looking-glass, and a part of the lady's tall form and countenance, while she sat knitting in her frilled cap. In the darkness of the room the chairs farthest off by the stove could hardly be distinguished from the kitchen door—from which now and then came the hissing of the roasting meat.

      "Three tricks, as true as I live—three tricks, and by those cards!" exclaimed Captain Rönnow, eager in the game.

      "Thanks, thanks," turning to Inger-Johanna who brought a lighted paper-lighter to his expiring pipe. "Th-a-nks"—he continued, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out, his observant eyes again being attracted by her. Her expression was so bright, the great dark eyes moving to and fro under her eyebrows like dark drops, while she stood following the cards.

      "What is your name, once more, my girl?" he asked absently.

      "Inger-Johanna," she replied with a certain humor; she avoided looking at him.

      "Yes, yes.—Now it is my turn to deal! Your daughter puts a bee in my bonnet, madam. I should like to take her with me to Christiania to the governor's, and bring her out. We would make a tremendous sensation, that I am sure of."

      "At last properly dealt! Play."

      With her hands on the back of her father's chair, Inger-Johanna gazed intently on the cards; but her face had a heightened glow.

      Rönnow glanced at her from one side. "A sight for the gods, a sight for the gods!" he exclaimed, as he gathered together with his right hand the cards he had just arranged, and threw them on the table. "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant manages dummy—you understand, madam," nodding to her with significance. "Heavens! Peter, that was a card to play.—Here you can see what I mean," he continued. "Trump, trump, trump, trump!" He eagerly threw four good spades on the table, one after another, without paying any attention to what followed.

      The expression of the lady's face, as she sat there and heard her innermost thoughts repeated so plainly, was immovably sealed; she said, somewhat indifferently, "It is high time, children, you said good-night; it is past your bed-time. Say good-night to the gentlemen."

      The command brought disappointment to their faces; not obeying was out of the question, and they went round the table, and made curtsies and shook hands with the captain and the lieutenant.

      The last thing Jörgen noticed was that the lieutenant turned round, stretched his neck, and gaped like Svarten as they went out.

      Their mother straightened up over her knitting-work. "You used to visit my brother's, the governor's, formerly, Captain Rönnow," she ventured. "They are childless folk, who keep a hospitable house. You will call on them now, I suppose."

      "Certainly I shall! To refrain from doing that would be a crime! You have, I should imagine, thought of sending one of your daughters there. The governor's wife is a person who knows how to introduce a young lady into the world, and your Inger-Johanna—"

      The captain's wife answered slowly and with some stress; something of a suppressed bitterness rose up in her. "That would be an entirely unexpected piece of good fortune; but more than we out-of-the-way country folk can expect of our grand, distinguished sister-in-law. Small circumstances make small folk, more's the pity; large ones ought to make them otherwise.—My brother has made her a happy wife."

      "Done. Will you allow an old friend to work a little for your attractive little Inger?" returned Captain Rönnow.

      "I think that Ma will thank you. What do you say, Gitta? Then you will have a peg to hang one of them on. It can't be from one of us two that Inger-Johanna has inherited her beauty, Ma!" said Captain Jäger, coughing and warding off his wife's admonitory look; "but there is blood, both on her father's and mother's side. Her great-grandmother was married off up in Norway by the Danish queen because she was too handsome to be at court—it was your grandmother, Ma! Fröken von—"

      "My dear Jäger," begged his wife.

      "Pshaw, Ma! The sand of many years has been strewed over