“Oh, hold your tongue!” exclaimed the head man, who was standing and trying to catch sight of his fellow-servants. He was angry at this untrustworthiness. “Don’t stand there crying! You’d do much more good if you ran down to the cart and see whether any one’s come.”
Pelle had to go, little though he cared to venture in under the trees. The branches hung silently listening, but the noise from the open ground came down in bursts, and in the darkness under the bushes living things rustled about and spoke in voices of joy or sorrow. A sudden scream rang through the wood, and made his knees knock together.
Karna sat at the back of the cart asleep, and Bengta stood leaning against the front seat, weeping. “They’ve locked Anders up,” she sobbed. “He got wild, so they put handcuffs on him and locked him up.” She went back with Pelle.
Lasse was with Karl Johan and Fair Maria; he looked defiantly at Pelle, and in his half-closed eyes there was a little mutinous gleam.
“Then now there’s only Mons and Lively Sara,” said Karl Johan, as he ran his eye over them.
“But what about Anders?” sobbed Bengta. “You surely won’t drive away without Anders?”
“There’s nothing can he done about Anders!” said the head man. “He’ll come of his own accord when once he’s let out.”
They found out on inquiry that Mons and Lively Sara were down in one of the dancing-booths, and accordingly went down there. “Now you stay here!” said Karl Johan sternly, and went in to take a survey of the dancers. In there blood burnt hot, and faces were like balls of fire that made red circles in the blue mist of perspiring heat and dust. Dump! Dump! Dump! The measure fell booming like heavy blows; and in the middle of the floor stood a man and wrung the moisture out of his jacket.
Out of one of the dancing-tents pushed a big fellow with two girls. He had an arm about the neck of each, and they linked arms behind his back. His cap was on the back of his head, and his riotous mood would have found expression in leaping, if he had not felt himself too pleasantly encumbered; so he opened his mouth wide, and shouted joyfully, so that it rang again: “Devil take me! Deuce take me! Seven hundred devils take me!” and disappeared under the trees with his girls.
“That was Per Olsen himself,” said Lasse, looking after him. “What a man, to be sure! He certainly doesn’t look as if he bore any debt of sin to the Almighty.”