Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/538

 Rh

wind whistled in the leaﬂess boughs of the old maples and limes just opposite my windows. The snow was drifting down the street, and the heavens were as dull and dark as any December sky can be in Christiania. My mind was dark and dull too. It was Christmas Eve; but it was the first Christmas Eve I had ever spent away from the domestic hearth. No long time before I had entered the army, and this Christmas I had hoped to gladden the hearts of my old parents with my presence. I had hoped, too, to show myself in all the glory of my uniform to the young ladies of the neighbourhood. But a nervous fever had brought me into the hospital, which I had only left a week, and now I found myself in that state of re-convalescence of which one hears so much praise, but which really is a very tedious matter. I had written home for our big Dapple and my father's Finnish fur cloak, in order that I might get away as soon as I could; but my letter could scarce ﬁnd its way up into the Dales before the day after Christmas Day, and so the horse and the cloak could hardly get down much before New Year's Day. In the town I hadn't a comrade in whom I took any interest, or who interested himself about me; nor did I know a single family with whom I could feel at-home. As for the two old maids at whose house I lodged, they were kind and good enough, and had taken great care of me when my sickness first came on; but the manners of these ladies and their whole way of life belonged too much to the old world, and sometimes they told me, with the most ridiculous earnestness, stories, the simple, old-fashioned cut of which, as well as their many improbabilities, belonged altogether to a bygone time. In truth, there was much in common between my landladies and the house in which they dwelt. It was one of those old piles in the Custom House Street, with deep windows and long, dark passages and stairs, with gloomy rooms and lofts, where one began naturally to think of brownies and ghosts. Added to this, their circle of acquaintances was as confined as their ideas; for except a married sister, not a soul ever came to see them but one or two boring city dames. The only lively thing was a pretty niece, and a few merry romping children, nephews and nieces, to whom I was always forced to tell a string of tales about brownies and elves.

There I sat, trying to amuse myself in my loneliness, and to drive away my heavy thoughts by looking out at all the busy mortals who trumped up and down the street in sleet and wind, with rosy-blue noses and half-shut eyes. At last I began to be enchanted with the bustle and life which was the order of the day, over at the dispensary. The door was never shut an instant. Servants and countrymen streamed in and out,