The days passed; Peer was sleepless, and ate
nothing. More days passed. At last he came bursting into the nursery
one morning: "Trunk call, Merle; summons to a meeting of the Company
Directors. Quick's the word. Come and help me pack--sharp." And in no
time he was off again to the city.
Now it was Merle's turn to walk up and down in suspense. It mattered
little to her in itself whether he got the work or not, but she was
keenly anxious that he should win.
A couple of days later a telegram came: "Hurrah, wife!" And Merle danced
round the room, waving the telegram above her head.
The next day he was back home again and tramping up and down the room.
"What do you think your father will say to it, Merle--ha!"
"Father? Say to what?"
"When I ask him to be my surety for a couple of hundred thousand
crowns?"
"Is father to be in it, too?" Merle looked at him open-eyed.
"Oh, if he doesn't want to, we'll let him off. But at any rate I'll ask
him first. Goodbye." And Peer drove off into town.
In Lorentz Uthoug's big house you had to pass through the hardware shop
to get to his office, which lay behind. Peer knocked at the door, with
a portfolio under his arm. Herr Uthoug had just lit the gas, and was
on the point of sitting down at his American roll-top desk, when Peer
entered. The grey-bearded head with the close thick hair turned towards
him, darkened by the shadow from the green shade of the burner.
"You, is it?" said he. "Sit down.
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