"Hedvig, what are you doing?--Hedvig, dearest child! Let go, do; it's your father!" Fru Egholm tried to pull her off.
Then Hedvig realised that the day was lost. She loosened her hold, and let Mother and Father wrest an arm to either side, till she stood as if crucified up against the wall, her head drooping, and yellow wisps of hair falling over her flushed face. And she fell to crying, with a horrible penetrating wail.
Egholm had still by no means recovered from his astonishment. He coughed, and began rubbing his neck, speculating the while on some appropriate punishment for the presumptuous girl.
"Well, you're a nice little beast, you are," he said. But he could hardly find more to say. There were not actually words in the language for criminals of that sex.
"You overgrown hobbledehoy, falling upon your own father, your own flesh and blood. I never heard of such a thing. If you had your deserts, you'd be bundled off to gaol this minute, you disgraceful young scoundrel."
Suddenly he began tearing down the planks and cardboard from the window, without a word of explanation, but with emphatic jerks and crashes that fell in time to his words and gave them added weight.
"You wait--I shan't--forget, you--squat-nosed--little--guttersnipe."
But for every tug at the flimsy covering, the light poured in more violently, like a wonderful grace of God. Both Hedvig and her mother, despite their indignation, could not help craning their necks to look, as the corner of a garden, with budding trees, came moving, as it were, towards them. Even Emanuel opened his eyes wide, and lifted his little hands towards the light.
Once he had begun, there seemed no end to Egholm's willingness to oblige. He cut the string by which the door was fastened, and tore away the padding from all sides.
"There! _Now_, are you satisfied?" he asked, with great politeness.
But there was something wanting yet to render his wife's satisfaction complete. Those bottles.... All along the shelves and dresser were rows of bottles, in every shape, thickness, and colour. Many of them were ticketed with complicated chemical names, and some bore the awe-inspiring death's-head poison label. Egholm had strung a tangle of lines from wall to wall, on which his photos hung to dry, exactly as when Hedvig played dolls' washing-day.