Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/82

 the good of the great Union, and insisted that it only brought heavy taxation. In that respect I am my mother's daughter; I can never forgive the Prussians, because in sixty-six they cut down all the trees in Ostra Avenue; and I can never see those stiff-backed military figures strutting along our streets without feeling irritated. Otherwise they had no subject for discussion, as I have already told you. As time went on I understood better how they felt towards each other, and I am convinced that with another wife he would have been a different man, and also a better father; and that, in a way, it was just his best qualities which, during the years he lived with mother, caused him to grow more and more reserved, and which finally turned him into an oddity. Odd, he really was beyond all description, and his peculiarities especially recoiled upon us children. Most annoying was his fury if he encountered any strangers in the house. It was an impossibility for me to have a friend with me if he was at home. Once, it was my birthday—I was eleven years old—my mother had given me permission to have a small party down in the garden, at an hour when we knew that my father was giving lessons. For some reason or another the school closed that day. Mother, who saw him coming down the street, flew out to us with a terrified face, and the whole party had to take to their heels through the next garden. You will understand that in this way he became quite an ogre to us, and that we took the part of mother, who really showed more feeling for us. Unfortunately this state of affairs led to our hating everything about him, and we hid much from him, with mother's knowledge and at her instigation, which his disapprobation might have stopped us from doing; while, as it was, his disapproval only seemed to us another proof of his bad temper, from