Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/143

 alone by the piano, with one leg lightly crossed over the other, the tips of the toes just touching the ground. He had a white glove on one hand, and a pocket handkerchief stuck in between his waistcoat and his vast shirt front.

Johansen, who had come to the parish about the same time as Emanuel, had quickly, in contrast to the other, become the lion of the neighbourhood. With his dark, somewhat theatrical hair, which, on grand occasions, was curled all over his head, his pale, fat, beardless face, his marvellously starched and frilled shirt, his stout legs and small feminine feet, he had fascinated all the young wives and girls at the winter festivities; his social talents had even procured admission for him to the country houses round about, and it was already considered not unlikely that one of the young ladies of the neighbourhood might one day bestow upon him something more than her admiration.

A moment after Emanuel's arrival the folding doors to the dining-room were thrown open. Miss Ragnhild came in and invited the company to sit down.

She was dressed in black silk, with yellow palm branches scattered over it, and a sort of lace overdress, which was transparent at the neck and below the elbows. Round her long, slender neck she wore a fine gold chain in four strands, gathered into an opal clasp. She had a large tortoise-shell comb in her dark auburn hair.