IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 133 



It is a practice not recommended for dinner-parties, 

 but when the moment arrived for pushing in the chairs, 

 and sliaking hands with the fellow-guests, it enabled 

 me to imitate with approximate success the words of 

 friendly greeting that pass round a Danish dinner-table 

 at the close of the meal. 



VII 



That friendship whose chiefest demonstration is to 

 stay up late and pass the bottle, has been vaunted 

 above its betters. It pales like its own candle-light 

 before the friendship that is astir betimes on a sharp 

 morning, disdaining, in the glow of its purpose, the 

 mellow sloth that ripens in warm foreknowledge of 

 the tea-tray. Wliile we waited, in the superfluously 

 fresh air of 8.30 a.m., for the engine to cease from its 

 morning quadrille among the cinders and the dogs, 

 and take us away for the last time from the windy 

 levels of Hou, we found ourselves the objects of a 

 general levee ; all our friends had come to see us off. 

 It was hard to realise that it was but a week since 

 we had come to the Villa Bjornkjoer, and learned 

 there what Danish kindness and hospitality could be. 

 It was still harder to feel for how indefinite a time 

 good-bye must needs be said, and how wholly in- 

 adequate — not to say absurd — were our endeavours 

 to give some sort of expression to our gratitude and 

 our regrets. The kindness received a touch of com- 

 pletion in the arrival of the lady who had given us 

 our first experience of a Danish dinner-party, and 

 Iiad suffered with unimpaired amiability a manifes- 

 tation of our powers of wliist-playing. Looking back 

 from the window of the train, her white hair, and 

 eyes kindling with benevolence beneath level brows, 



