Pelle made no response. He only thought of the wrong and the shame that had come upon them, and found no relief.
Next morning he took his dinner and went off as usual, but when he was halfway to school he lay down under a thorn. There he lay, fuming and half-frozen, until it was about the time when school would be over, when he went home. This he did for several days. Toward his father he was silent, almost angry. Lasse went about lamenting, and Pelle had enough with his own trouble; each moved in his own world, and there was no bridge between; neither of them had a kind word to say to the other.
But one day when Pelle came stealing home in this way, Lasse received him with a radiant face and weak knees. “What on earth’s the good of fretting?” he said, screwing up his face and turning his blinking eyes upon Pelle—for the first time since the bad news had come. “Look here at the new sweetheart I’ve found! Kiss her, laddie!” And Lasse drew from the straw a bottle of gin, and held it out toward him.
Pelle pushed it angrily from him.
“Oh, you’re too grand, are you?” exclaimed Lasse. “Well, well, it would be a sin and a shame to waste good things upon you.” He put the bottle to his lips and threw back his head.
“Father, you shan’t do that!” exclaimed Pelle, bursting into tears and shaking his father’s arm so that the liquid splashed out.
“Ho-ho!” said Lasse in astonishment, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “She’s uncommonly lively, ho-ho!” He grasped the bottle with both hands and held it firmly, as if it had tried to get away from him. “So you’re obstreperous, are you?” Then his eye fell upon Pelle. “And you’re crying! Has any one hurt you? Don’t you know that your father’s called Lasse—Lasse Karlsson from Kungstorp? You needn’t he afraid, for Lasse’s here, and he’ll make the whole world answer for it.”
Pelle saw that his father was quickly becoming more fuddled, and ought to be put to bed for fear some one should come and find him lying there. “Come now, father!” he begged.
“Yes, I’ll go now. I’ll make him pay for it, if it’s old Beelzebub himself! You needn’t cry!” Lasse was making for the yard.
Pelle stood in front of him. “Now you must come with me, father! There’s no one to make pay for anything.”