Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/302

After his first shyness had worn off he began to take note of his companions, and immediately became interested in a certain young lady who was the governess of some children staying in the hotel. Had he been told that the cause of his interest in her was hers in him, he would not have believed it. Hjorth was a man who was thoroughly imbued with a sense of his own originality.

It all came about after she had asked him to be so kind as to pass the sugar at "aftens," the evening meal corresponding to English high tea. A little discussion ensued as to the Norwegian for sugar, in which the children, her charges, joined. Hjorth, who, of course, like every educated Norsemen, could speak English, instructed them in the word, and then they asked for bread, tea, coffee, and eggs, all of which he translated for them.

The governess laughed merrily with the children. The languages were exactly alike, they declared.

Afterwards he met her now and then, taking walks by herself or with the little girls. Amy Travis contrived that they should meet alone not seldom. She on her side was interested in him.

She used to draw him out. She was a creature of impulses and fads, and her fad at the moment was Norway. During the season that she had just passed in London with the family with whom she lived, she had taken every opportunity that presented itself of going to the theatre to see the Ibsen plays. She had read what she had not seen acted, and was really grateful to the Norwegian writer, declaring that he had given her a taste for the reading of drama, and that since she had known Ibsen and not till then, she had been able to read and enjoy Shakespeare. The deacon was to her a very romantic object. Moreover he seemed to be much in the same position that she occupied—a subordinate one. She felt for him. The mind that is essentially mediocre kicks continually against the subordinate, though it never rises beyond it. Hjorth,to