Tomas was too proud to appear to notice anything, but he made Karl pay for it.
One especial time, Tomas grumbled about this during a music lesson, and she answered that so it would continue until he became as good a boy as Karl, which he was far from being at present. Then he swore vengeance.
On Saturday afternoons, Karl always went to the churchyard, to put fresh flowers on his parents' graves. On the next Saturday, as he was going down with his basket, Tomas met him in the avenue, and asked him if he would promise not to talk any more to Augusta. But Karl, so accommodating in other things, would not promise this, not even when Tomas struck him. He struck him again and again, with all the strength he could muster, but Karl would not promise to give her up. Quite beside himself, Tomas kicked him in a dangerous manner; he gave a loud cry and dropped down. Tomas had him carried home, and rushed away for the doctor. When, his forehead bathed in sweat from anxiety and the speed with which he had run, he passed the place where Karl had fallen down, with his eyes fixed upon him, another image of his companion rose before him--that of the helpless, silent lad who had knelt down and prayed by his bedside the first evening in his new home.
Tomas kept this resurrection of the former Karl in his soul.
He hurried back home again before the doctor, in order that he might, as he passed the spot where Karl had fallen, kneel down, unseen by any one, and cry and pray.
That evening his mother, Andreas Berg, and he sat by themselves in the parlour. Andreas Berg had come in at Fru Rendalen's request to tell Tomas the history of his father's (John Kurt's) childhood--to tell it in her presence without any reserve. Berg was a grave man, not free from severity. He had been made angry, more than once, by Tomas's performances with Karl. And he now related the various circumstances of John Kurt's life when a boy, related them without a single word of blame; but this only made it fall the heavier. This was part of Berg's nature.
The mother did not feel it needful to add a single word.
She heard Tomas, late that evening, sobbing and crying beside Karl's bed, and the next day saw him talking to Augusta in the passage.
In the course of the day he had flung his arms round his mother's neck and cried. But he had said nothing, though it worked in his mind for a long while.
In the meantime it was determined that Karl's time of probation should end, and that he should be considered as a son of the house from that time. The doctor had declared that he would all his life feel the effects of the kick which jealousy and domineering had bestowed on him. And this had decided the question.