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174 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
unwelcome news, for, tlie rain having ceased, such a
walk I knew by old experience to be about sufficient
for the purpose of clothes-drying.
The road passes across a wild and desolate moor, with
a few stumps of spectral trees that start up here and
there out of the misty semi-darkness; for now the nights
are just beginning. At about one a.m. I reached quite
a charming villa, that I could not have ventured to
suppose a station but for the well-displayed sign. I
knocked, and waited awhile, when two young ladies—I
am using 110 hyperbole, 110 complimentary phrase of
mere formality, when I say two elegant young ladies—
bade me, with the best-bred politeness, to enter, and
showed me to a well-furnished room. There was
nothing of the wooden, peasant farmhouse character
about anything; and I rubbed my eyes to be sure that
I had not fallen asleep on the wild moor, or been
enchanted by the spectral stumps. A supper of veal
and milk, with real wheaten bread, served with courtly
politeness by the elegant ladies, was of so decidedly
material and solid a character as to convince me that it
must be reality.
My bedroom was not a straw and sheepskin affair,
but quite an elegant apartment, containing a tent bed
with lace curtains, with a stuffed eider-down tumble-off
cushion coverlid ; such as you have on your bed at night,
and pick off the floor in the morning, in Germany.
1 felt the want of a few phrases on this occasion, in
order to apologize properly for disturbing these young
ladies at so late an hour; for, to be candid, I must con-
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