SCENE 5
Enter Jacob.
JACOB. Ha! ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! My brother may be a very learned man, but he is a great simpleton for all that.
NILLE. You wicked rascal! Do you call your brother a simpleton?
JACOB. I really don't know what I ought to call such a thing, little mother. It rained until it poured, and yet he let me walk along behind him with the cloak on my arm.
JEPPE. Couldn't you have been civil enough to have said, "Mossur, it is raining. Won't you put on your cloak?"
JACOB. It seems to me, little father, it would have been very strange for me to say to the person whose parents had spent so much money upon him to teach him wisdom and cleverness, when so much rain was falling on him that he was wet to his shirt, "It is raining, sir; won't you put on your cloak?" He had no need of my warning; the rain gave him warning enough.
JEPPE. Did you walk the whole way, then, with the cloak on your arm?
JACOB. Marry, I did not; I wrapped myself up comfortably in the cloak; so my clothes are perfectly dry. I understand that sort of thing better than he, though I've not spent so much money learning wisdom. I grasped it at once, although I don't know one Latin letter from another.
JEPPE. Your brother was plunged in thought, as deeply learned folk usually are.
JACOB. Ha, ha! the devil split such learning!
JEPPE. Shut up, you rogue, or shame on your mouth! What does it matter if your brother is absent-minded about such things as that, when in so many other matters he displays his wisdom and the fruit of his studies?
JACOB. Fruit of his studies! I shall tell you what happened next on our trip. When we came to Jeronimus's gate, he went right to the side where the watch-dog stood, and he would have had his learned legs well caulked if I had not dragged him to the other side; for watch-dogs are no respecters of persons: they measure all strangers with the same stick, and bite at random whatever legs they get hold of, whether Greek or Latin. When he entered the court, Mossur Rasmus Berg absent-mindedly went into the stable and shouted, "Hey, is Jeronimus at home?" But the cows all turned their tails to him and none of them would answer a word. I am certain that if any of them could have talked, they would have said, "What a confounded lunk-head that lad must be!"
NILLE. Oh, my dear husband, can you stand hearing him use such language?
JEPPE. Jacob, you will get into trouble if you talk like that any more.
JACOB. Little father ought rather to thank me, for I set him to rights and took him out of the stable toward the house. Just think what might happen to such a lad if he should go on a long journey alone; for I'm sure that if I had not been with him, he would have been standing in the stable yet, gazing at the cows' tails, from sheer learning.
JEPPE. A plague on your impudent mouth!
[Jacob runs off, Jeppe after him.
NILLE. The confounded rogue!—I have sent word to the bailiff and the deacon, so that my son can have some one to dispute with when he comes back.