Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/152

 explanation, he added, "Well, now you know what you have to do."

He then whistled the dog, spat contemptuously, and marched off by a side-path into the wood, at the same time looking occasionally over his shoulder to see whether we were also returning.

We did so, with that crestfallen feeling which, whether reasonably or not, one has after such an encounter.

"That was a fine old Pan who came and drove us away, instead of the little one you had dreamt of."

"What a bear!" she said sulkily, and imitated mockingly his hoarse bass.

The children laughed boisterously.

"Well, I suppose he was right after all, though a notice-board ought to have been put up," she said. "If I were a forester, I should also be annoyed with all these people who come running about in the woods. But you really ought to feel it more than I, being the son of a ranger. Was your father like that, Harald?"

"My father was a Royal Forester, this one was only an impolite steward."

"Aristocrat!"

"Well, you yourself do not speak exactly like a democrat about people who roam about the woods."

"That is quite a different matter."

"No, not at all."

In this way we argued gently and joked for the rest of the way. Indeed, in the end we even played tig with the children, and came home hot and out of breath and in the best humour in the world.