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Updated: May 22, 2025
As luck would have it, the priest came out on Monday morning, and said to Grindhusen half jestingly: "Your mate here and I have decided to have the well up on the hill, and lay down a pipe-line to the house. What do you think of it? A mad idea?" Grindhusen thought it was a first-rate idea.
He gave me a lesson out of Pontoppidan to learn, and now I'm to be heard. It is touching to be taught religion now as I should have taught it myself when I was a child. The well was finished, the trench was dug, and the man had come to lay the pipes. He chose Grindhusen to help him with the work, and I was set to cutting a way for the pipes up from the cellar through the two floors of the house.
Grindhusen was good enough at hoeing potatoes and using a rake here and there, but not of much account when it came to loading hay. Nils himself was a first-rate hand, and a glutton for work. I gave the house a third coat, and the delicate grey, picked out with white, made the place look nobler altogether. One afternoon I was at work, the Captain came walking up from the road.
And if you don't believe me, why, here's the money, and you can see. There!" "But what was it all about?" asked several voices at once. "He'd better not say, if you ask me," I said. It struck me that the engineer must have been miserable and desperate when he sent me to fetch Grindhusen.
Grindhusen works away a couple of hours with his putty and paint, and soon one side of the little house, the north side, facing the sea, is done all gaily in red. At the mid-day rest, I go out and join him, with something to drink, and we lie on the ground awhile, chatting and smoking. "Painter? Not much of a one, and that's the truth," says he.
Well, now, I dare say you're right." Just then came Fruen's voice from outside she had come right over to the stable door. "Aren't you ready yet? How much longer am I to sit waiting?" "Ready this minute," answered Grindhusen, and turned to again, busier than ever. "It was only these girths." Fruen went back to the carriage.
Something thrilled me warmly at the word; it was like a calling from my youth, from Skreia, from days a generation gone. I row across to him and ask: "Can you dig that well all alone?" "No. I'll have to take another man along." "Take me," I said. "Wait for me here, while I go up and settle at the house." Half-way up I heard Grindhusen calling again: "I can't wait here all night.
"A long way, up in the hills, to Trovatn, to a forest." He did not believe me in the least, but he answered quickly and evasively: "Ay, I dare say, yes." After we had finished the pipes, Nils sent Grindhusen and myself up cutting wood till the Captain returned. We cut up and stacked the top-ends the woodmen had left; neat and steady work it was. "We'll be turned off, both of us," said Grindhusen.
I opened the carriage door, and asked respectfully if Fruen would let me drive this time. She looked me calmly in the face. "No. What for?" she said. "Grindhusen might be a little done up, perhaps I don't know...." "He promised to drive," she said. "And he's not done up. Isn't he nearly ready?" "I can't see him," I answered.
"But if any one comes along and asks if I can paint a bit of a wall, why, of course I can. First-rate Brandevin this you've got." His wife and two children lived some four miles off, and he went home to them every Saturday. There were two daughters besides, both grown up, and one of them married. Grindhusen was a grandfather already.
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