Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/315

 "devilish good preacher," and an excellent young man.

There was still one of the peasant fraternity who held aloof, and that was Maren Smeds, the hideous little woman who had taken such a prominent part on the occasion of Emanuel's first speech. Her history was as follows.

Having in her youth once been kitchen-maid in a gentleman's house, she was, for a long time, chosen to cook all the great feasts of the neighbourhood, a position which gained for her both glory and comfortable means. At a great christening feast, at which more than a hundred guests were present, she had the misfortune to burn the rice porridge. Although her husband, who was then alive and acting as master of the ceremonies, immediately thrashed her soundly before the eyes of all the company, the people would never have any more to do with her, and ever afterwards had their cooks from the town.

This was the cause of that hatred of her kind, which made the poor creature the only socialist in the place; and since the affair in the Meeting House all her bitterness had been spent on Emanuel.

Hansine, who at this time was most anxious to conciliate every one, and in her timorous love, to disperse every threatening cloud from her future, one afternoon went to the tumble-down hut, a long way beyond the village, where Maren lived, to ask her to come and cook at her wedding.