Wanderers | Page 7

be like when it comes to eating porridge?" I thought to myself hysterically.
Then when he leaned back on the bench to rest after his meal in the same greasy state, I called to him straight out:
"For Heaven's sake, man, aren't you going to wipe your mouth?"
He stared at me, wiping his mouth with one hand. "Mouth?" he said.
I tried to turn it off then as a joke, and said: "Haha, I had you there!" But I was displeased with myself, for all that, and went out of the brewhouse directly after.
Then I fell to thinking of Fr?kenen. "I'll make her answer when I give a greeting," I said to myself. "I'll let her see before very long that I'm not altogether a fool." There was that business of the well and the pipe-line, now; what if I were to work out a plan for the whole installation all complete! I had no instruments to take the height and fall of the hill ... well, I could make one that would serve. And I set to work. A wooden tube, with two ordinary lamp-glasses fixed in with putty, and the whole filled with water.
Soon it was found there were many little things needed seeing to about the vicarage--odd matters here and there. A stone step to be set straight again, a wall to be repaired; the bridgeway to the barn had to be strengthened before the corn could be brought in. The priest liked to have everything sound and in order about the place--and it was all one to us, seeing we were paid by the day. But as time went on I grew more and more impatient of my work-mate's company. It was torture to me, for instance, to see him pick up a loaf from the table, hold it close in to his chest, and cut off a slice with a greasy pocket-knife that he was always putting in his mouth. And then, again, he would go all through the week, from Sunday to Sunday, without a wash. And in the morning, before the sun was up, and the evening, after it had gone, there was always a shiny drop hanging from the tip of his nose. And then his nails! And as for his ears, they were simply deformed.
Alas! I was an upstart creature, that had learned fine manners in the cafés in town. And since I could not keep myself from telling my companion now and then what I thought of his uncleanly ways, there grew up a certain ill-feeling between us, and I feared we should have to separate before long. As it was, we hardly spoke now beyond what was needed.
And there was the well, as undug as ever. Sunday came, and Grindhusen had gone home.
I had got my apparatus finished now, and in the afternoon I climbed up to the roof of the main building and set it up there. I saw at once that the sight cut the hillside several metres below the top. Good. Even reckoning a whole metre down to the water-level, there would still be pressure enough and to spare.
While I was busy up there the priest's son caught sight of me. Harald Meltzer was his name. And what was I doing up there? Measuring the hill; what for? What did I want to know the height for? Would I let him try?
Later on I got hold of a line ten metres long, and measured the hill from foot to summit, with Harald to help. When we came down to the house, I asked to see the priest himself, and told him of my plan.

VI
The priest listened patiently, and did not reject the idea at once.
"Really, now!" he said, with a smile. "Why, perhaps you're right. But it will cost a lot of money. And why should we trouble about it at all?"
"It's seventy paces from the house to the well we started to dig. Seventy steps for the maids to go through mud and snow and all sorts, summer and winter."
"That's true, yes. But this other way would cost a terrible lot of money."
"Not counting the well--that you'll have to have in any case; the whole installation, with work and material, ought not to come to more than a couple of hundred Kroner," said I.
The priest looked surprised.
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
I waited a little each time before answering, as if I were slow by nature, and born so. But, really, I had thought out the whole thing beforehand.
"It would be a great convenience, that's true," said the priest thoughtfully. "And that water tub in the kitchen does make a lot of mess."
"And it will save carrying water to the bedrooms as well."
"The bedrooms are all upstairs. It won't help us there, I'm afraid."
"We can run the pipes up to the