When their snobbishness and rudeness brought tears to his eyes, or when he was hurt on account of their silly jests, Marjon only laughed.
"But do not you care, Marjon?" asked Johannes, indignantly. "Does it not annoy you that they, every one of them, seem to think themselves so much finer, more important, and fortunate beings than you and I, when, instead, they are so stupid and ugly?"
And he thought of the people Wistik had shown him.
"Well, but what of it?" said Marjon, merrily. "We get our living out of them. If they only give, I don't care a rap. Kees is much uglier, and you laugh about it as much as I do. Then why don't you laugh at the snobs?"
Johannes meditated a long time, and then replied:
"Keesje never makes me angry; but sometimes, when he looks awfully like a man, then I have to cry over him, because he is such a poor, dirty little fellow. But those people make me angry because they fancy themselves to be so much."
Marjon looked at him very earnestly, and said:
"What a good boy you are! As to the people—the public—why, I've always been taught to get as much out of 'em as I could. I don't care for them so much as I care for their money. I make fun of them. But you do not, and that's why you're better. That's why I like you."
And she pressed her fair head, with its glossy, short-cut hair, closer against his shoulder, thinking a little seriously about those hard words, "no foolishness."
They were happy days—that free life, the fun of earning the pennies, and the beautiful, late-summer weather amid the mountains. But the nights were less happy. Oh! what damp, dirty rooms and beds they had to use, because Fair-people could not, for even once, afford to have anything better. They were so rank with onions, and frying fat, and things even worse! On the walls, near the pillows, were suspicious stains; and the thick bed-covers were so damp, and warm, and much used! Also, without actual reason for it, but merely from imagination, Johannes felt creepy all over when their resting-place was recommended to them, with exaggerated praise, as a "very tidy room."