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Chapter 1 The stationmaster put on his uniform coat to be ready for the train. "There's no damn time for anything," he said, stretching his arms. He had been dozing over the accounts. He lit a cigar stub and went out on to the platform. Now, as he walked up and down, erect in his uniform and with his hands in both his jacket pockets, there was still something of the lieutenant about him. And it could be seen on his legs, too, which were still bent in the way he had acquired in the cavalry. Five or six farm lads had arrived and were standing legs akimbo in a group opposite the station building; the station porter dragged the freight out, a sole, green-painted chest that looked as though it had been dropped by the side of the road. The parson's daughter, tall as an officer in the guards, flung the platform gate open and entered. The stationmaster clicked his heels and saluted. "And what does madam intend to do today?" he said. When he was "on the platform", the stationmaster conversed in the tone he used to employ in the club balls at Næstved in his old cavalry days. "Walk," said the parson's daughter. She made some curious flapping gestures as she spoke, as though she intended to hit whoever she was addressing. "By the way, Miss Abel is coming home." "Already — from town?" "Ye-es." "Nothing in the offing yet?" The stationmaster extended the fingers on his right hand in the air, and the parson's daughter laughed. "Here come the family," she said. "I made my excuses and ran away from them ..." The stationmaster paid his respects to the Abel family, the widowed Mrs Abel and her elder daughter Louise. They were accompanied by Miss Jensen. Mrs Abel looked resigned. "Yes," she said, "I have come to meet my little Ida." Mrs Abel took it in turns to fetch her Louise and her little Ida. Louise in the spring and little Ida in the autumn. They each spent six weeks with an aunt in Copenhagen."My sister, the one who was married to a State Councillor," said Mrs Abel. The State Councillor's widow lived in a fourth floor apartment and lived by decorating terracotta ornaments with paintings of storks standing on one leg. Mrs Abel always dispatched her daughters with all good wishes. She had now been dispatching them for ten years. "And such letters we have received from my younger daughter this time." "Aye, those letters," said Miss Jensen. "But it is better to have your chicks at home," said Mrs Abel, looking tenderly at Louise. Mrs Abel had to dry her eyes at the thought.
