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"In town one must have other things to think about, and then it isn't really proper work for a man!" "I'll do it myself all right," murmured Pelle ungraciously. Now he would show them that he could keep himself decent. It was partly in order to revenge himself for his own neglect that he refused the offer. "Yes, yes," said Lasse meekly; "I just asked you. I hope you won't take it amiss."
And for half a year afterward, at meals, they heard reminiscences of drinking and fighting and love-making the whole festivity. But this was at an end. Lasse was not the man to continue to let himself be trifled with. He possessed a woman's affection, and a house in the background. He could give notice any day he liked.
The bailiff had, indeed, gone through the names with them once, but it was impossible to remember half a hundred names after hearing them once even for the boy, who had such an uncommon good memory. If Lasse now killed the pupil, then who would help them to make out the names? The bailiff would never stand their going to him and asking him a second time.
He had assumed the expression peculiar to the young master. But then he read aloud: "Lost! A louse with three tails has escaped, and may be left, in return for a good tip, with the landowner Lasse Karlson, Heath Farm. Broken black bread may also be brought there." The others burst into a shout of laughter, but Pelle turned an ashen gray.
They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste makes a compact with it." A specimen of the énigme-sonnets may be of interest, to show in what intellectual playfulness and trivialities these wits indulged: "Souvent, quoique léger, je lasse qui me porte.
On the great day itself, Karl Johan drove Pelle and Lasse in the little one-horse carriage. "We're fine folk to-day!" said Lasse, with a beaming face. He was quite confused, although he had not tasted anything strong. There was a bottle of gin lying in the chest to treat the men with when the sacred ceremony was over; but Lasse was not the man to drink anything before he went to church.
Lasse Frederik had to take his bicycle and ride to the chemist's, and immediately after the doctor drove away. They sat outside the garden door, so that they could hear any sound from the sick girl, and talked together in low tones. It was sad to see Morten; Johanna's flight from him had wounded him deeply. "I wonder why she did it?" said Pelle.
But now spring was advancing, and with it came troubles not the daily trifles that could be bad enough, but great troubles that darkened everything, even when one was not thinking about them. Pelle was to be confirmed at Easter, and Lasse was at his wits' end to know how he was going to get him all that he would need new clothes, new cap, new shoes!
"She's a good girl, that she is," said Lasse, feeling in his sack. "She shall have a present. There's a red apple," he said to Marie, when she returned; "you must eat it, and then you'll be my sweetheart." Marie smiled gravely and looked at Pelle. They borrowed the old clothes dealer's handcart and went across to the apple barges to fetch Lasse's belongings.
Lasse turned his head and nodded, then bent down and hammered the peg into the ground. The bull was just behind him, stamping quickly, with open mouth and tongue hanging out; it looked as if it were vomiting, and the sound it made answered exactly to that. Pelle laughed as he slackened his pace. He was close by.
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