The following play again brought capital cookery, good foul, and good
wine--that was to honor Mr. Thostrup. His health was drunk, Maren was
more confidential, the aunt had forgotten her trouble, and again sat
with a laughing face beside the constrained shopman. They must, it is
true, make a little haste over their dinner, for the fire-engine was to
be tried; and this splendor, they maintained, Otto must see, since he so
fortunately chanced to lie there.

"How can my mother think that this will give Mr. Thostrup pleasure?"
said Maren. "There is nothing to see in it."

"That has given him pleasure formerly!" answered the mother. "It is,
also, laughable when the boys run underneath the engine-rain, and the
stream comes just in their necks."

She spoke of the former Otto and of the present one--he was become so
Copenhagenish, so refined and nice, as well in the cut of his clothes
as in his manners; yet she still found an opportunity of giving him a
little hint to further refinement. Only think! he took the sugar for his
coffee with his fingers!

"But where are the sugar-tongs, the massive silver sugar-tongs?" asked
she. "Maren, dost thou allow him to take the sugar with his fingers?"

"That is more convenient!" answered Otto. "I do that always."

"Yes, but if strangers had been here," said the hostess, in a friendly
but teaching tone, "we must, like that grand lady you know of, have
thrown the sugar out of the window."

"In the higher circles, where people have clean fingers, they make use
of them!" said Otto. "There would be no end of it if one were to take it
with the sugar-tongs."

"They are of massive silver!" said the lady, and weighed them in her
hand.

Toward evening Rosalie went into the garden under the plum trees.

"These, also, remind me of my mountains," said she; "this is the only
fruit which will properly flourish there. Lemvig lies, like La Locle, in
a valley," and she pointed, smiling, to the surrounding sand-hills.
"How entirely different it is here from what it is at home on thy
grandfather's estate! There I have been so accustomed to solitude, that
it is almost too lively for me here. One diversion follows another."

It was precisely this which Otto did not like. These amusements of the
small towns wearied him, and he could not delight himself with them, no
longer mingle in this life.

He wished to set out early the following morning. It would be too
exhausting to drive along the dry road i