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He stationed himself there every morning at about four, and waited for the bailiff to come down. It was now six, and had just begun to grow light. Lasse and Pelle had finished cleaning out the cow-stable and distributing the first feed, and they were hungry.
It was a very little cow-stable, but, as Susan suggested, if we could not get a small grown-up cow to fit it, "we might begin with a young cow, and teach her, as she grew larger, to accommodate herself to her quarters by standing cat-a-cornered, like the man who used to carry oxen up a mountain."
In preparing the ground for the reception of these plants, spade it up to the depth of a foot and a half, at least, and work into it a liberal amount of good manure, or some commercial fertilizer that will take the place of manure from the barnyard or cow-stable.
The blood was the worst, and so Father Lasse always let himself be bled when there was anything the matter with him; the bad humors had to be let out. Gustav thought a great deal about blood, and could tell the strangest things about it; and he cut his fingers only to see whether it was ripe. One evening he came over to the cow-stable and exhibited a bleeding finger. The blood was quite black.
So steadily enough the bays trotted up the lane and between long lines of green cordwood on one side and a hay-stack on the other, into the yard, and swinging round the big straw-stack that faced the open shed, and was flanked on the right by the cow-stable and hog-pen, and on the left by the horse-stable, came to a full stop at their own stable door.
"To-day you must take your coat with you, for we shall have rain about midday," Lasse would then say; and Pelle peered into the sky to find out where his father got his knowledge from. For it generally came true. They then set about cleaning out the dung in the cow-stable, Pelle scraping the floor under the cows and sweeping it up, Lasse filling the wheelbarrow and wheeling it out.
First one and then another would leap into the air as they went; they uttered short, shrill cries and disconnected oaths at random. The consciousness of the full bottles, Saturday evening with the day of rest in prospect, and above all the row with the bailiff, had roused their tempers. They settled down below the cow-stable, in the grass close to the pond.
"To-day you must take your coat with you, for we shall have rain about midday," Lasse would then say; and Pelle peered into the sky to find out where his father got his knowledge from. For it generally came true. They then set about cleaning out the dung in the cow-stable, Pelle scraping the floor under the cows and sweeping it up, Lasse filling the wheelbarrow and wheeling it out.
"If I ask the bailiff for an advance now when we're going to town, he'll say 'no' straight out. I wonder whether the girls haven't wages lying by." They were just coming up from the cow-stable with their milk-pails. "I say, girls," Erik called out to them. "Can't one of you lend us ten krones? She shall have twins for it next Easter; the sow farrows then anyhow."
For you must always remember, laddie, not to set yourself up against those that are placed over you. Some of us have to be servants and others masters; how would everything go on if we who work didn't do our duty? You can't expect the gentlefolk to scrape up the dung in the cow-stable." All this Lasse expounded after they had gone to bed, but Pelle had something better to do than to listen to it.
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