“Why the devil can’t you come over to the rest of us?” said Rothe, who was dressed in his best, having just come from a meeting of the town council.
“Not such a fool. This is not the only place where there’s any shade to cool the beer.” Vang pointed under one of the bushes. “Look there—might be in the garden of Eden.”
Henrik Vang himself was perspiring profusely, out of anxiety on his friend Egholm’s behalf.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Just look out there, and see it’s really true. There’s the boat—the steamer he’s invented. Now, if I live to be a hundred”—here he glanced darkly at Rothe—“if I lived to be two hundred, I could never invent a steamboat. Not me.”
“There’ve been steamboats before, I fancy,” said Rothe.
“Eh, what?” Vang looked up sharply, and was for a moment at a loss; then he laughed, and waved Rothe aside with his broad paw. “Oh yes, those great big unwieldy things, I know. Any fool can make a thing like that. But a little steamboat—that’s another thing!”
He caught sight of Sivert lying flat in the grass, dividing his attention equally between his father’s manœuvres with the machinery and Vang’s operations with the bottles.
“Come up here, boy!” cried Vang, and Sivert crawled nearer. He dared not let himself be seen, least of all by his father.
“How does he do it?” Vang looked sternly, but with unsteady gaze, at the boy. “You ought to know. How does your father manage it—inventing things and all that?”