Pelle the Conqueror | Page 7

kept. In it he packed their
belongings and a few little things of Bengta's, and sent it on in advance
to the port with a horse-dealer who was driving there. Some of the
rubbish for which no one would bid he stuffed into a sack, and with it
on his back and the boy's hand clasped in his, he set out to walk to
Ystad, where the steamer for Ronne lay. The few coins he had would
just pay their passage.
He had been so sure of himself on the way, and had talked in loud tones
to Pelle about the country where the wages were so incomprehensibly
high, and where in some places you got meat or cheese to eat with your
bread, and always beer, so that the water-cart in the autumn did not
come round for the laborers, but only for the cattle. And--why, if you
liked you could drink gin like water, it was so cheap; but it was so

strong that it knocked you down at the third pull. They made it from
real grain, and not from diseased potatoes; and they drank it at every
meal. And laddie would never feel cold there, for they wore wool next
their skin, and not this poor linen that the wind blew right through; and
a laborer who kept himself could easily make his two krones a day.
That was something different from their master's miserable eighty ores
and finding themselves in everything.
Pelle had heard the same thing often before--from his father, from Ole
and Anders, from Karna and a hundred others who had been there. In
the winter, when the air was thick with frost and snow and the needs of
the poor, there was nothing else talked about in the little villages at
home; and in the minds of those who had not been on the island
themselves, but had only heard the tales about it, the ideas produced
were as fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the window-panes. Pelle was
perfectly well aware that even the poorest boys there always wore their
best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping with sugar on it as often as
they liked. There money lay like dirt by the roadside, and the
Bornholmers did not even take the trouble to stoop and pick it up; but
Pelle meant to pick it up, so that Father Lasse would have to empty the
odds and ends out of the sack and clear out the locked compartment in
the green chest to make room for it; and even that would be hardly
enough. If only they could begin! He shook his father's hand
impatiently.
"Yes, yes," said Lasse, almost in tears. "You mustn't be impatient." He
looked about him irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of all this
splendor, and could not even find a humble situation for himself and
the boy. He could not understand it. Had the whole world changed
since his time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the last cart
drove off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly after it, and
then he and the boy together carried the green chest up to a wall, and
trudged hand in hand up toward the town.
Lasse's lips moved as he walked; he was thinking. In an ordinary way
he thought best when he talked out loud to himself, but to-day all his
faculties were alert, and it was enough only to move his lips.

As he trudged along, his mental excuses became audible. "Confound
it!" he exclaimed, as he jerked the sack higher up his back. "It doesn't
do to take the first thing that comes. Lasse's responsible for two, and he
knows what he wants--so there! It isn't the first time he's been abroad!
And the best always comes last, you know, laddie."
Pelle was not paying much attention. He was already consoled, and his
father's words about the best being in store for them, were to him only a
feeble expression for a great truth, namely, that the whole world would
become theirs, with all that it contained in the way of wonders. He was
already engaged in taking possession of it, open-mouthed.
He looked as if he would like to swallow the harbor with all its ships
and boats, and the great stacks of timber, where it looked as if there
would be holes. This would be a fine place to play in, but there were no
boys! He wondered whether the boys were like those at home; he had
seen none yet. Perhaps they had quite a different way of fighting, but he
would manage all right if only they would come one at a time. There
was a big ship right up on land, and they were skinning it. So ships
have ribs,