“Then you must pretend to let him go while you’re holding him high up in the air; and then he’ll scream and think he’s going to die, and the others’ll come and laugh at him.”
“No, no; you mustn’t tempt your father! It might come into my mind to throw him down, and that would be murder and penal servitude for life, that would! No, I’ll just give him a good scolding; that’s what a classy scoundrel like that’ll feel most.”
“Yes, and then you must call him a spindle-shanked clodhopper. That’s what the bailiff calls him when he’s angry with him.”
“No, I don’t think that would do either; but I’ll speak so seriously with him that he won’t be likely to forget it in a hurry.”
Pelle was quite satisfied. There was no one like his father, and of course he would be as good at blowing people up as at everything else. He had never heard him do it, and he was looking forward to it immensely while he hobbled along with the boot-jack. He was not using it as a wooden leg now, for fear of tempting Providence; but he held it under his arm like a crutch, supporting it on the edge of the foundation wall, because it was too short. How splendid it would be to go on two crutches like the parson’s son at home! He could jump over the very longest puddles.
There was a sudden movement of light and shadow up under the roof, and when Pelle turned round, he saw a strange boy standing in the doorway out to the field. He was of the same height as Pelle, but his head was almost as large as that of a grown man. At first sight it appeared to be bald all over; but when the boy moved in the sun, his bare head shone as if covered with silver scales. It was covered with fine, whitish hair, which was thinly and fairly evenly distributed over the face and everywhere else; and his skin was pink, as were the whites of his eyes. His face was all drawn into wrinkles in the strong light, and the back of his head projected unduly and looked as if it were much too heavy.
Pelle put his hands in his trouser pockets and went up to him. “What’s your name?” he said, and tried to expectorate between his front teeth as Gustav was in the habit of doing. The attempt was a failure, unfortunately, and the saliva only ran down his chin. The strange boy grinned.
“Rud,” he said, indistinctly, as if his tongue were thick and unmanageable. He was staring enviously at Pelle’s trouser pockets. “Is that your father?” he asked, pointing at Lasse.
“Of course!” said Pelle, consequentially. “And he can thrash everybody.”
“But my father can buy everybody, because he lives up there.” And Rud pointed toward the big house.