The Captain walked to the stable door and looked out, biting his moustache and thinking hard. Then he asked over his shoulder:
“And you can't spare the lad, either?”
“No,” said Nils; “he's the harrowing to do.”
This was our first real encounter with the Captain, and we had our way. There were some little troubles again later on, but he soon gave in.
“I want a case fetched from the station,” he said one day. “Can the boy go in for it?”
“The boy's as ill to spare as a man for us now,” said Nils. “If he's to drive in to the station now, he won't be back till late tomorrow; that's a day and a half lost.”
“Bravo!” I said to myself again. Nils had spoken to me before about that case at the station; it was a new consignment of liquor; the maids had heard about it.
There was some more talk this way and that. The Captain frowned; he had never known a busy season last so long before. Nils lost his temper, and said at last: “If you take the boy off his field work, then I go.” And then he did as he and I had agreed beforehand, and asked me straight out:
“Will you go, too?”
“Yes,” said I.