Now and again she came over to where he sat, and thrust her fingers down among the potatoes, to see if there were enough done yet.
It was a long, long time before the kitchen door opened, and the two superior beings within said, “Tak for Mad.”[3] Not till then could Sivert fall to upon the crumbs from their richer table—a draggled herring and a few diseased potatoes.
“It’s a funny big world,” thought Sivert, “but seems mainly alike in most things.” His father’s thrashings had been delivered with more solemnity than his present master’s clouts, but then, on the other hand, Father would never have left a whole herring.
He had just finished washing up when the smith woke from his afternoon nap. “Kept up with him that time,” thought Sivert, with some pride.
Evening came, after an endless day. Sivert had had his supper, and was standing with the bucket of leavings out by the pigs’ trough, when he saw the journeyman striding out through the gate—a sight to see, with his hat down over his eyes and a cigar between his teeth pointing upwards. The boy wept with emotion at seeing him go—that strangling brute. Ah, the day was over now. He would have peace at last. He could go to bed.
The pigs sniffed at the empty bucket, and grunted encouragingly. Sivert was overjoyed with the pigs—he had made friends with them already, after dinner. There were two of them, one black.
He clambered up on the partition, and talked confidentially to them about the events of the day.
“Now, don’t you think I’m crying, because I’m not. Not a bit of it. I promised mother I wouldn’t. I was only wiping my nose, and you thought I was crying—ha ha, I did you there! And I’m not homesick, no; only making a little invisible sound, the same as when you’re homesick. It’s a trick I’ve learnt, and it’s not everybody can do it. Just listen.... No; you’ve got to be quiet. You make worse noises than Madam Dorn. Homesick? What for, I should like to know? Father in Knarreby? I tell you I’m not fretting for him a single bit. Still, he couldn’t do anything to me about the bag; he never said I was to put it in the train.
“Homesick? For Hedvig, perhaps? She’s not really warm to sleep with, you know, and she always pulls the clothes off me. Oh, but of course you don’t know Hedvig. She’s my sister—a girl, you understand....”
Sivert realised on a sudden that between his knowledge and that of his hearers was a great gulf fixed. He fell to laughing, and then shook his head contemptuously.