Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/12

 happy moments upon which to look back. And in this frame of mind I will recall, as well as I can, the days of Rathen and those which followed.

To find a lodging was the first difficulty that presented itself. The two inns had only the most inferior rooms left, and these at rather high terms. I was driven from pillar to post, and had many times to cross the little brook and ascend the tiny wooden steps, from the shoemaker's on the one side to the baker's on the other, back again to the watchman, and then again over to the grocer's; but either the lodging was let or else two rooms went together, and to pay for two rooms was more than I could afford. In the end the school-house, which lay far back on the outskirts of the pine woods, remained as my last hope.

As it was not school time, I knocked boldly at the door of the master's private apartments. A small boy answered the knock. He did not know, he said, whether the master was at home, and having vanished for a moment he suddenly flew past me up the stairs, to appear almost instantaneously with a pair of boots in his hand; then again he darted away, to return triumphantly with a coat. Soon afterwards the schoolmaster appeared, equipped in this outfit, with a half-sleepy and half-comical smile on his open, good-natured face. Quite right, he had two rooms to let, but they were only let together and at the rent of two guineas a month. I apologised for having given him useless trouble, and he consoled me with the hope that I might get a single room in the new Pension-Villa next door.

The villa, which I now approached, looked very smart; the green shutters were thrown back from the windows, creepers covered the walls, and the verandah was well shaded by foliage. It stood on high ground, and the