Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/118

 simple, festive, Sunday comfort rested over the little sunny peasant's home, with which Emanuel was charmed. He involuntarily compared this simplicity with the gorgeous luxury of his own home, furnished with all the modern townspeople's outfit of thick carpets, velvet upholstery, heavy portières and exotic plants, in which the depraved taste of advanced civilization indulged. On the wall between the windows he discovered a small collection of portraits of well-known men in simple wood-cuts. There were Tscherning, Grundtvig, Monrad, and a few others whom he knew. The centre place was occupied by a larger picture which showed Frederick VII. signing the constitution. Emanuel remembered the same picture in his mother's room—and it moved him strangely to meet it again after so many years in these surroundings.

He was roused from his observations by hearing steps in the courtyard. From a little gate between the stables came a young girl with a yoke on her shoulders, and milk pails suspended, followed by the same white-haired lad who had driven the sledge on that winter night. The young girl had on her Sunday best, a cherry-coloured dress fancifully braided over the bosom and on the sleeves. She had fastened up the skirt in her