But he had noticed that Elsie could follow him. And when he saw how he could sway her to his music, so that the bright eyes now stood full of tears, now opened as if before a revelation, then the old wreck sighed: “She will go high in it, too.”
Out in the garret a wonderful clatter was heard, and some one took hold of the door.
“Tra-tra-tra! the drummer is there!” shouted Schirrmeister, and struck up a gay march.
The door opened and in came a drum, strapped to a long, spare fellow in a blue uniform coat with long skirts. Next came a big, fat man with a flute under his arm.
One needed only to see his underlip to know at once that he was Puppelena’s brother. But whether the flute was to blame or it lay in his temperament, his lip was much thicker, and hung twice as far down.
This person had in his day been steward (Okonomen) in the prison but had been discharged. And now he lived at his sister’s “pension” as he said. Among “the gang” he went under the sobriquet, Olkonomen (from Ol or ale); and so far as one could discover, he did not do a single, blessed thing but drink, play the flute, and run errands for his sister.
There was something mysterious, by the way, about these errands, which were always undertaken after dark. Olkonomen’s long, double-breasted coat was singularly stuffed when he went out; but when, comparatively thin, he returned, his sister threw herself upon him, like a hawk, before any one else got a hand on him; for it was the common opinion in “the gang” that after such expeditions, he brought home money.
Loppen knew both Olkonomen and Jorgen Tambur well; she rose at once and made room for them as well as she could.
Jorgen Tambur had brought with him two bottles of ale, and a quart of brandy for the concert. Olkonomen winked mysteriously and said he had sent a message; something he always said. Nobody knew what kind of a message it was or where it was sent; but they all knew perfectly well that it would never be answered.
Meanwhile, old Schirrmeister cast a deprecating look at the drinkables and announced that he would not play that day.