Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/65

 the pond. He walked along half asleep, but when he entered the shop and perceived the well-known mixed odour of soap, raisins, coffee, and tobacco, he became wide awake at once. He stopped a minute in the dark listening to the heavy snoring of the shop boy in a little closet at the back of the shop. Then he lighted a candle end which stood ready for him on the counter, noiselessly counted the change in the till, inspected the boxes of raisins and prunes, peered up into the rafters, and held the candle down into the cellar; and only when he had satisfied himself that there was nothing suspicious to be seen anywhere did he go into the bedroom.

His young wife sat up in bed rubbing her eyes, and at once began a minute statement of all that had taken place in the shop during the day; the miller who had been there with grain, Hans Jensen who had bought a cask of brandy, and Sören, the old tailor, to whom she had given credit for a pound of candy—and so on. She was a plump little creature with a round childish face framed in a big grandmother's nightcap.

Villing undressed rapidly, throwing in approving remarks. "Good!—very good, little Siné—very well done, little friend," he ejaculated from time to time as he skipped about in his socks and drawers, looking as if he was chasing his own shadow, which now shrunk up like a frog in one corner, and then spread out like a ghost on the low walls of the little room.