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People in passing stopped to rejoice over the diligence displayed, and Fris beat more briskly with the cane, and felt a long-forgotten ideal stirring within him; he had this whole flock of children to educate for life, he was engaged in creating the coming generation.
And a few days later, when this had become stale, something happened which put a stop forever to Pelle's school attendance. The children were busy at arithmetic, chattering and clattering with their slates, and Fris was sitting as usual in his place, with his head against the wall and his hands resting on the desk.
Yes! What?" they cried in chorus; and one boy said: "That the sun's fallen into the sea and set it on fire!" The master quietly took up his hymn-book. "Shall we sing 'How blessed are they'?" he said; and they knew that something must have happened, and sang the hymn seriously with him. But at the fifth verse Fris stopped; he could not go on any longer.
There's been a song made about his misfortune, Fris, and every time he heard it he was like a new-born lamb in the cold. The children sing it, too." Ole looked round at them imploringly. "It was only a piece of boyish heedlessness, and now he's taken his punishment."
The children dropped into softly whispered conversation about Peter Funck, and all their faces had grown old with gravity. "Where did it happen?" asked a big boy. Fris awoke with a sigh.
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.
Fris himself probably did not feel the change, for he had ceased to feel both for himself and for others. None now brought their human sorrows to him, and found comfort in a sympathetic mind; his mind was not there to consult. It floated outside him, half detached, as it were, like a bird that is unwilling to leave its old nest to set out on a flight to the unknown.
The children took their playtime early, and rushed out before Pelle had given the signal; and Fris trotted off as usual into the village, where he would be absent the customary two hours. The girls gathered in a flock to eat their dinners, and the boys dashed about the playground like birds let loose from a cage.
"Look at that little man!" said Fris, impressed. "And I declare if he isn't right and all the rest of us wrong! God helps those that help themselves!" "Perhaps," said a voice. It was Henry Bodker's. "Well, well, I know He didn't help here, but still we ought always to do what we can in all the circumstances of life. Peter did his best and he was the cleverest boy I ever had."
Suddenly he jumped on to the table, and danced there in his stockinged feet. Fris gazed at him so strangely, Pelle thought; he was like Father Lasse when everything went wrong; and he slid down, ashamed. Nobody had noticed his action, however; it was far too ordinary. It was a deafening uproar, and now and then an ill-natured remark was hurled out of the seething tumult.
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