Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/271

 pect me to dinner, and I'll bring a few friends with me, and we'll sit and talk and have a good time. Good-bye, so long! I am glad to have seen them. Now I can tell Jetté about thee, she'll be delighted. I wanted to bring her to-day, but she had to stay at home at the school with the little girls. And we've just been to the king's city the other day, to the spring meeting of the "New Danish Community." Oh, they were beautiful days."

"But let us go into the house," urged Emanuel, this time more emphatically.

"No, no, drive me away, or I shall stand here jabbering till I lose my breath. Till we meet again, then! Good-bye, good-bye! Remember me to the family in there!"

He had hardly left the courtyard before Hansine appeared in the door of the brew-house, with her sleeves turned up and a bowl of scraps in her hand. She was just in time to see the broad back of the stranger disappear through the gate.

"I never!" she exclaimed, putting down the bowl on the flags and running to Emanuel. "Wasn't that our High School director. How was that? Have you two been standing here long? Mother and I were down in the cellar, so we didn't hear you.… It was him, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so!"

She discovered the disappointment in his face by the tone of his voice, and became quite alarmed.