Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
Up at his desk stood Nilen, busily picking its lock to get at a pipe that Fris had confiscated during lessons. "Here's your knife!" he cried, throwing a sheath-knife to Pelle, who quickly pocketed it. Some peasant boys were pouring coal into the stove, which was already red-hot; by the windows sat a crowd of girls, hearing one another in hymns.
Many never went further, but many let themselves be caught and whirled away out into the unknown. Of these was Nilen. When the ships were being fitted out he could wait no longer. He sacrificed two years' apprenticeship, and ran away on board a vessel which was starting on a long voyage.
Nilen was still hanging like a leech to the back of his neck, and Henry tore his blouse in getting him thrown off. To Pelle he seemed to be tremendously big as he stood there, only breathing a little quickly.
"So you've become a cobbler?" says Nilen, to begin with, compassionately, for he feels a deucedly smart fellow himself in his fine white clothes, with his bare arms crossed over his naked breast. Pelle feels remarkably comfortable; he has been given a slice of bread and cream, and he decides that the world is more interesting than ever.
It is no other than Nilen, the wonderful little devil Nilen, of his schooldays, who was always fighting everybody like a terrier and always came out of it with a whole skin. Pelle shuts his eyes and blushes for himself, although he knows perfectly well that this is only an apparition.
It was his mediocrity as a teacher of arithmetic that the imps were always aiming at, but he would not be drawn into a discussion with them. Nilen repeated his question, while the others tittered; but Fris did not hear he was too deep in his paper. So the whole thing dropped. Fris looked at his watch; he could soon give them a quarter of an hour's play, a good long quarter of an hour.
Nilen is chewing manfully, and spitting over the end of the bed. "Do you chew?" asks Pelle, and hastens to offer him the leaf-tobacco. "Yes, we all do; a fellow has to when he works all night." Pelle cannot understand how people can keep going day and night. "All the bakers in Copenhagen do so that the people can get fresh bread in the morning and our master wants to introduce it here.
But a woman well, that's only for when a man's bored. See?" He stretches himself, yawning. Nilen has become quite a young man, but a little crude in his manner of expressing himself. He sits there and looks at Pelle with a curious expression in his eyes. "Cobbler's patch!" he says contemptuously, and thrusts his tongue into his cheek so as to make it bulge.
Pelle says nothing; he knows he cannot thrash Nilen. Nilen has lit his pipe and is lying on his back in bed with his muddy shoes on chattering. "What's your journeyman like? Ours is a conceited ass. The other day I had to fetch him a box on the ears, he was so saucy. I've learned the Copenhagen trick of doing it; it soon settles a man. Only you want to keep your head about it."
For a moment he ran to and fro and breathed the air; then he got upon the scent, and ran at a breathless gallop toward the sea-dunes, where the young folk of the town played late into the summer night that lay over the wan sea. Of course, it was only a loan. Pelle had to sole a pair of shoes for a baker's apprentice who worked with Nilen; as soon as they were finished he would repay the money.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking