Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/124

 They walked over the yard together, and went into the room where the sun still shone brightly into the windows, throwing little squares of golden light over the table and the sanded floor. Anders Jörgen offered Emanuel the seat of honour in the old arm-chair by the stove, while he himself, in white stocking feet, sat on the corner of a wooden chair by the alcove. He folded his hands solemnly on his knees, palms upwards, as he did during the sermon at church, and remained sitting in this position, listening to every sound outside with an uneasy expression, in the plainly visible hope that it was his wife returning to set him free from his misery.

Emanuel, on the contrary, felt more and more at his ease in the comfortable little peasant's room. He quickly found a subject for conversation in the fine spring weather, and with a degree of ease which astonished himself, he talked of the joy and gratitude which the farmers in particular ought to feel at seeing how the Almighty was blessing their labours. He did not pay any attention to Anders Jörgen's restless abstraction. On the other hand, he often looked in the course of the conversation with attention towards the daughter of the house. She had come into the room, and sat down with a piece of work by the window, where the sun fell on to her erect little figure, and threw a warm glow over her darkbrown plaits. She had completed her toilet by a broad crotchet collar which fell over her