Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

for women. Several of them had given proof of it⁠—his brother, for instance, who had taken the fancy of a parson’s wife. Then Pelle would have to make the most of his opportunity so that the family would be ashamed to oppose the match. And Pelle was good enough. He had that “cow’s-lick” on his forehead, fine hair at the back of his neck, and a birthmark on his hip; and that all betokened luck. Lasse went on talking to himself as he walked, calculating the boy’s future with large, round figures, that yielded a little for him too; for, however great his future might be, it would surely come in time to allow of Lasse’s sharing and enjoying it in his very old age.

They went across country toward the stone-quarry, following stone dikes and snow-filled ditches, and working their way through the thicket of blackthorn and juniper, behind which lay the rocks and “the Heath.” They made their way right into the quarry, and tried in the darkness to find the place where the dross was thrown, for that would be where the stone-breaking went on.

A sound of hammering came from the upper end of the ground, and they discovered lights in several places. Beneath a sloping straw screen, from which hung a lantern, sat a little, broad man, hammering away at the fragments. He worked with peculiar vivacity⁠—struck three blows and pushed the stones to one side, another three blows, and again to one side; and while with one hand he pushed the pieces away, with the other he placed a fresh fragment in position on the stone. It went as busily and evenly as the ticking of a watch.

“Why, if that isn’t Brother Kalle sitting there!” said Lasse, in a voice of surprise as great as if the meeting were a miracle from heaven. “Good evening, Kalle Karlsson! How are you?”

The stone-breaker looked up.

“Oh, there you are, brother!” he said, rising with difficulty; and the two greeted one another as if they had met only the day before. Kalle collected his tools and laid the screen down upon them while they talked.

“So you break stones too? Does that bring in anything?” asked Lasse.

“Oh, not very much. We get twelve krones a ‘fathom’ and when I work with a lantern morning and evening, I can break half a fathom in a week. It doesn’t pay for beer, but we live anyhow. But it’s awfully cold work; you can’t keep warm at it, and you get so stiff with sitting fifteen hours on the cold stone⁠—as stiff as if you were the father of the whole world.” He was walking stiffly in front of the others across the heath toward a low, humpbacked cottage.

“Ah, there comes the moon, now there’s no use for it!” said Kalle, whose spirits were beginning to rise. “And, my word, what a sight the old dormouse looks! He must have been at a New Year’s feast in heaven.”

“You’re the same merry devil that you were in the old days,” said Lasse.

“Well, good spirits’ll soon be the only thing to be had without paying for.”

The wall of the house stuck out in a large round lump on one side, and Pelle had to go up to it to feel it all over. It was most mysterious what there might be on the other side⁠—perhaps a secret chamber? He pulled his father’s hand inquiringly.

“That? That’s the oven where they bake their bread,” said Lasse. “It’s put there to make more room.”

After inviting them to enter, Kalle put his head in at a door that led from the kitchen to the cowshed. “Hi, Maria! You must put your best foot foremost!” he called in a low voice. “The midwife’s here!”

“What in the world does she want? It’s a story, you old fool!” And the sound of milk squirting into the pail began again.

“A story, is it? No, but you must come in and go to bed; she says it’s high time you did. You are keeping up much too long this year. Mind what you say,” he whispered into the cowshed, “for she is really here! And be quick!”

They went into the room, and Kalle went groping about to light a candle. Twice he took up the matches and dropped them again to light it at the fire, but the peat was burning badly. “Oh, bother!” he said, resolutely striking a match at last. “We don’t have visitors every day.”

“Your wife’s Danish,” said Lasse, admiringly. “And you’ve got a cow too?”

“Yes, it’s a biggish place here,” said Kalle, drawing himself up. “There’s a cat belonging to the establishment too, and as many rats as it cares to eat.”

His wife now appeared, breathless, and looking in astonishment at the visitors.

“Yes, the midwife’s gone again,” said Kalle. “She hadn’t time today; we must put it off till another time. But these are important strangers, so you must blow your nose with your fingers before you give them your hand!”

“Oh, you old humbug! You can’t take me in. It’s Lasse, of course, and Pelle!” And she held out her hand. She was short, like her husband, was always smiling, and had bowed arms and legs just as he had. Hard work and their cheerful temperament gave them both a rotund appearance.

“There are no end of children here,” said Lasse, looking about him. There were three in the turn-up bedstead under the window⁠—two small ones at one end, and a long, twelve-year-old boy at the other, his black feet sticking out between the little girls’ heads; and other beds were made up on chairs, in an old kneading-trough, and on the floor.

“Ye-es; we’ve managed to scrape together a few,” said Kalle, running about in vain to get something for his visitors to sit upon; everything was being used as beds. “You’ll have to spit on the floor and sit down on that,” he said, laughing.

His wife came in, however, with a washing-bench and an empty beer-barrel.

“Sit you down and rest,” she