On week days he was surrounded by the school-boys, and
although he had no love for those wild beasts whose taming, or rather
whose efficient acquisition of the difficult art of dissembling, was
his life task, yet he felt a certain void when he was not with them.
Now, during the long summer vacations, he had established a holiday
school, but even so he had been compelled to give the boys short summer
holidays, and, with the exception of meal times when he could always
count on the bookseller and the second violin, he had been alone for
several days.
"At two o'clock," he mused, "when the guard has been relieved, and the
crowds have dispersed, I'll go to my restaurant to dine; then I'll
invite the bookseller to Stromsborg; there won't be a soul to-day; we
can have coffee there and punch, and stay till the evening when we'll
return to town and to Rejner's." (Rejner's was the name of his
restaurant in Berzelius Place.)
Punctually at two o'clock he took his hat, brushed himself carefully
and went out.
"I wonder whether there'll be stewed perch to-day," he thought. "And
mightn't one treat oneself to asparagus, as it's midsummer-day?"
He strolled past the high wall of the Government Bakery. In Berzelius
Park the seats which were usually occupied by the nursemaids of the
rich and their charges, were crowded with the families of the
labourers who had appeared in great numbers with their perambulators.
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