It was all very well for Grindhusen. He had gone ravening after the girls
when he was young, and he still spanked about with his hat on one side,
out of habit. But he was quiet and tame enough now, as well he might
be--'tis nature's way. But some there are who would not follow nature's
way, and be tamed; and how shall it fare with them at last? And then there
was little Elisabeth; and she was none so little after all, but as tall as
her mother. And she'd her mother's high breast.
Since that first Sunday they had not asked me in to coffee in the kitchen,
and I took care myself they should not, but kept out of the way. I was
still ashamed of the recollection. But then, at last, in the middle of the
week, one of the maids came with a message that I was not to go running
off into the woods every Sunday afternoon, but come to coffee with the
rest. Fruen herself had said so.
Good!
Now, should I put on my best clothes or not? No harm, perhaps, in letting
that young lady get into her head that I was one who had chosen to turn my
back upon the life of cities, and taken upon myself the guise of a
servant, for all I was a man of parts, that could lay on water to a house.
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