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They afforded him his first glimpse of the great city, and they helped him to get work from Pipman. On the day after the outing in the forest, Pelle moved over to the row of attics, into a room near the "Family," which was standing empty just then. Marie helped him to get tidy and to bring his things along, and with an easier mind he shook himself free of his burdensome relations with Pipman.
She was rummaging about down there, scurfy and repulsive to look at, chewing an unappetizing slice of bread-and-butter, and starting at every sound that came from above, so anxious was she about her filthy money! Pelle needed a new heel-iron, so he went in and purchased that of Pipman. He had to haggle with her over the price.
Pipman was superfluous as a middleman; one could get a little work without the necessity of going to him and pouring a flask of brandy down his thirsty gullet. But was it any more reasonable that the shoes Pelle made should go to the customer by way of the Court shoemaker and yield him carriages and high living? Could not Pelle himself establish relations with his customers?
There was an end of his profit-sharing, and all the recriminations which were involved in it. Now he could enter into direct relations with the employers and look his comrades straight in the eyes. For various reasons it had been a humiliating time; but he had no feeling of resentment toward Pipman; he had learned more with him in a few months than during his whole apprenticeship at home.
She locked the door carefully and put the key under the doorstep. Then they set out. There was no reasoning with this sot of a Pipman! He edged round Pelle with an uncertain smile, gazed inquisitively into his face, and kept carefully just out of his reach. "You're angry, aren't you?" he said confidingly, as though he had been speaking to a little child. "Dreadfully angry?
"You'd better let me chatter, Pelle else I shall go running in and gossiping with strangers. Old chatterbox that I am, I go fidgeting round here, and I've no one I can trust; and I daren't even talk to myself! Then that Pipman hears it all through the wooden partition; it's almost more than I can bear, and I tremble lest my toothless old mouth should get him into trouble!"
"You'd better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest of yours," said Pipman surlily. "After all, there might be a thief here, near heaven as we are!" Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound.
If such a mass of wealth were shared out there'd never be any poverty any more!" He stood there with his arms uplifted, as though he held it all in his hands. Then he laughed uproariously. He looked full of energy. Morten lay half asleep, staring at him and saying nothing. And then he went. Pipman scolded Pelle outrageously when at last he returned. "Curse it all, what are you thinking of?
"You hold your tongue!" He propped himself up in the doorway and stood there staring. Pelle seized him by the collar. "Where are my Sunday trousers?" he asked angrily. The Pipman had the old ones on, but where were the new? The Pipman stared at him uncomprehending, his drowsy features working in the effort to disinter some memory or other. Suddenly he whistled. "Trousers, did you say, young man?
And shake off Meyer as he had shaken off Pipman? Why, of course! It was said that the Court shoemaker paid taxes on a yearly income of thirty thousand kroner. "That ought to be evenly divided among all those who work for him!" thought Pelle, as he hammered away at his pegs. "Then Father Lasse wouldn't need to stay at home a day longer, or drag himself through life so miserably."
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