Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/160

 circumstances, he had not had an opportunity of telling the Provst that he proposed to speak here to-day. He had intentionally put off till the last moment saying anything about it, just as he had asked the weaver not to announce the meeting publicly, so that the Provst might not have time to prohibit him from taking part in it. But when, shortly before leaving the Parsonage, he sought the Provst, he found that he had left the house half an hour earlier to pay a visit.

Under these circumstances he thought it proper to lay his plans before Miss Ragnhild, with whom he had made friends again since the collision on the night of the party; though the old familiar terms were by no means re-established. Miss Ragnhild was not nearly so surprised as Emanuel had expected. She had heard one thing and another about the curate's doings from the old servant; besides, she had guessed something of what was impending from various utterances of his own.

If Miss Ragnhild was not astonished, Emanuel—to make up—was very much so, at the unusual severity with which the young lady spoke home truths to him, and advised him strongly against taking his proposed step.

"With all your faint-heartedness you are a curiously fickle person," she said. "Here you plunge blindly into something you know nothing about—merely because you are not satisfied with the position in which you find yourself for the