Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/139

 their father's handsome library with the picture-books and the big globe. The servants also called them "the young lady and gentleman," while they nicknamed him "the mistress' boy." How often and how bitterly had he not felt, that since the day of his mother's death, he had become solitary and homeless in his father's house!

He wandered on the beach so long, buried in his thoughts, that he forgot both time and place. When at length he reached the Parsonage, he found to his dismay that the guests had already begun to arrive, and he had to hurry his dressing so as not to be too late.

When he entered the drawing-room a quarter of an hour later, he was received by a most ungracious look from the Provst, who, in evening dress and skull cap, was gesticulating in the middle of the room, in his animated conversation with a couple of other gentlemen, also in evening dress.

There were about a score of people assembled. The three landowners of the neighbourhood were there, the old schoolmaster Mortensen, Aggerbölle the veterinary surgeon, and Villing the store-keeper, and all their wives in silk dresses. In addition, there were six peasant farmers from Veilby, their wives, and Johanson, the young assistant teacher. There were none of the Skibberup people, and no representatives of the Veilby cottagers, because the last of the faithful among these had, to the Provst's great