The food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said, couldn't be called human food at all. The lefser were so hard, they said, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat on them, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shoulders of mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one scraped against the bare bone.
Up into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.
But as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that it was as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavy expenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, without having to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and fresh butter and lefser and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no need to starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses, said she.
And then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own lefser, which she had filled with butter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. And he tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners of his mouth. Such good greasy lefser he had never tasted before.
Then the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.
He was as red as a turkey-cock; and out of the shop-door they went head first--some three yards and some four, according as he got a good grip of them; and old Thore, who had steered the big femböring, both for him and his father, was discharged.
But Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on the threshing-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer was shrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood there and peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, who hadn't been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out of her bedroom window.
She took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she saw their old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his cap in his hand as if he were deranged.
But she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, for there stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platter of mölje in her hand, and shook her fist after him.
Then Kjel was like to have wept too.... That stout Toad should not grease herself shiny with mölje fat much longer in their house, or he'd know the reason why, thought Kjel.