So she was coming in to town by the boat
arriving on Sunday evening. With kind regards, his sister, Louise Hagen.
Peer was rather startled. He seemed to have taken a good deal on his
shoulders.
On Sunday evening he put on his blue suit and stiff felt hat, and walked
down to the quay. For the first time in his life he had some one else to
look after--he was to be a father and benefactor from now on to some one
worse off than himself. This was something new. The thought came back to
him of the jolly gentleman who had come driving down one day to Troen to
look after his little son. Yes, that was the way to do things; that was
the sort of man he would be. And involuntarily he fell into something of
his father's look and step, his smile, his lavish, careless air. "Well,
well--well, well--well, well," he seemed saying to himself. He might
almost, in his fancy, have had a neat iron-grey beard on his chin.
The little green steamboat rounded the point and lay in to the quay,
the gangways were run out, porters jumped aboard, and all the passengers
came bundling ashore. Peer wondered how he was to know her, this sister
whom he had never seen.
The crowd on deck soon thinned, and people began moving off from the
quay into the town.
Then Peer was aware of a young peasant-girl, with a box in one hand and
a violin-case in the other. She wore a grey dress, with a black kerchief
over her fair hair; her face was pale, and finely cut. It was his
mother's face; his mother as a girl of sixteen.
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