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Updated: May 13, 2025
And about the middle of the afternoon the incomparable result is completed; a pair of wonderful satin shoes, slender as a neat's tongue, dazzling in their white brilliance, as though they had just walked out of the fairy-tale and were waiting for the feet of the Princess. "Look at them, damn it all!" says the master, and passes them to little Nikas, who passes them round the circle.
Little Nikas had to look out for something else; their means would not allow them to keep a journeyman. So Nikas decided to marry, and to set up as a master shoemaker in the north. The shoemaker of the Baptist community had just died, and he could get plenty of customers by joining the sect; he was already attending their services. "But go to work carefully!" said Jeppe. "Or matters will go awry!"
Pelle was not quite sure that the journeyman had noticed this. "Bjerregrav has forgotten " "Hold your jaw." Little Nikas made a movement backward, and Pelle ducked his head and pressed his hand tightly to his mouth. Over in Staal Street there was a great uproar; an enormously fat woman was standing there quarrelling with two seamen. She was in her nightcap and petticoat, and Pelle knew her.
Little Nikas began to whistle too, and the two older apprentices who were beating leather began to strike in time with the whistling, and they even kept double time, so that everything went like greased lightning.
Only the knee-strap of little Nikas, the journeyman, kept him from jumping up then and there and throwing himself down like Paul. This knee-strap was a piece of undeniable reality in the midst of all his imaginings; in two months it had taught him never quite to forget who and where he was.
"Blom's are angry about the screw-block!" said Pelle. "Death and all the devils! We must see about putting it in repair and returning it; remember that, and take it with you to the smith's. Well, what in the world shall we do?" The young master stared helplessly from one to another. "Shoemaker Marker," suggested little Nikas. "We don't borrow from Marker," and the master wrinkled his forehead.
In the workshop he made himself useful and tried to stand well with everybody. He won over little Nikas by drawing a somewhat extravagant representation of his betrothed from a photograph. The face would not come out quite right; it looked as though some one had trodden on it; but the clothes and the brooch at the throat were capital.
Even the master does not bother him, but endures his taciturnity and little Nikas submits to being treated like an apprentice. Garibaldi raises his head. "Well, one didn't come here to sit about and idle!" he cries gaily. "Plenty to do, master?" "There's not much doing here, but we've always work for you," replies Master Andres.
Inside the workshop they whistle and sing to the hammer-strokes; there are times when the dark room sounds like a bird-shop. "Thank God, now we have the spring!" says Master Andres over and over again, "but the messenger of spring doesn't seem to be coming this year." "Perhaps he is dead," says little Nikas. "Garibaldi dead? Good Lord! he won't die just yet.
With a leap he was across the table and had pulled little Nikas to the ground underneath him; there he lay, squeezing the man's throat with his fingers, trying to throttle him, until he was overpowered. Emil and Peter had to hold him while the knee-strap put in its work.
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