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He was using the cane to beat time with, now and then letting it descend upon the back of an offender, but always only at the end of a line as a kind of note of admiration. Fris could not bear to have the rhythm broken. The children who did not know the hymn were carried along by the crowd, some of them contenting themselves with moving their lips, while others made up words of their own.
There had been much to correct, and things of grave importance that Fris had had to patch up for the lad in all secrecy, so that they should not affect his whole life, and "It was in the North Sea," he said. "I think they'd been in England." "To Spain with dried fish," said a boy. "And from there they went to England with oranges, and were bringing a cargo of coal home."
They could all swim themselves, but it appeared that hardly any of their fathers could; they had a superstitious feeling against it. "Father says you oughtn't to tempt Providence if you're wrecked," one boy added. "Why, but then you'd not be doing your best!" objected a little faltering voice. Fris turned quickly toward the corner where Pelle sat blushing to the tips of his ears.
"If a pound of flour costs twelve ores, what will half a quarter of coal cost?" Fris sat for a little while and looked irresolutely at Pelle. It always hurt him more when Pelle was naughty than when it was one of the others, for he had an affection for the boy. "Very well!" he said bitterly, coming slowly down with the thick cane in his hand. "Very well!"
There was a deep wound in the forehead. When Pelle saw the dead body with its gaping wound, he began to jump up and down, jumping quickly up, and letting himself drop like a dead bird. The girls drew away from him, screaming, and Fris bent over him and looked sorrowfully at him. "It isn't from naughtiness," said the other boys. "He can't help it; he's taken that way sometimes.
Another time Fris came back after an unusually long playtime in low spirits. He kept on blowing his nose hard, and now and then dried his eyes behind his spectacles. The boys nudged one another. He cleared his throat loudly, but could not make himself heard, and then beat a few strokes on his desk with the cane. "Have you heard, children?" he asked, when they had become more or less quiet. "No!
Fris was dead dead at his post, as the honest folks of the parish expressed it. Pelle had finished his schooling for good, and could breathe freely. He helped his father at home, and they were happy together and drew together again now that there was no third person to stand between them.
He got it once when he saw a man almost killed." And they carried him off to the pump to bring him to himself again. Fris and Ole busied themselves over the dead body, placed something under the head, and washed away the sand that had got rubbed into the skin of the face. "He was my best boy," said Fris, stroking the dead man's head with a trembling hand.
"Hymns!" he would cry in his feeble voice, and strike the desk from habit; and the children would put aside what they were doing to please the old man, and begin repeating some hymn or other, taking their revenge by going through one verse over and over again for a whole hour. It was the only real trick they played the old man, and the joke was all on their side, for Fris noticed nothing.
It was Pelle who, one day in his first year at school, when he was being questioned in Religion, and Fris asked him whether he could give the names of the three greatest festivals in the year, amused every one by answering: "Midsummer Eve, Harvest-home and and " There was a third, too, but when it came to the point, he was shy of mentioning it his birthday!