The others went out in their finest clothes, but Pelle did not care to go. He had not been able to accomplish his constant resolution to keep himself neat and clean, and this failure weighed upon him and abashed him. And the holes in his stockings, which were now so big that they could no longer be darned, were disgustingly apparent, with his skin showing through them, so that he had a loathing for himself.
Now all the young people were going out. He could see the sea in the opening at the end of the street; it was perfectly calm, and had borrowed the colors of the sunset. They would be going to the harbor or the dunes by the sea; there would be dancing on the grass, and perhaps some would get to fighting about a girl. But he wasn’t going to be driven out of the pack like a mangy dog; he didn’t care a hang for the whole lot of them!
He threw off his apron and established himself on a beer-barrel which stood outside before the gate. On the bench opposite sat the older inhabitants of the street, puffing at their pipes and gossiping about everything under the sun. Now the bells sounded the hour for leaving off work. Madame Rasmussen was beating her child and reviling it in time with her blows. Then suddenly all was silent; only the crying of the child continued, like a feeble evening hymn. Old Jeppe was talking about Malaga—“when I ran ashore at Malaga!”— but Baker Jörgen was still lamenting his want of an heir, and sighing: “Yes, yes; if only one could see into the future!” Then he suddenly began to talk about the Mormons. “It might really be great fun to see, some time, what they have to offer you,” he said.
“I thought you’d been a Mormon a long time, Uncle Jörgen,” said Master Andres. The old man laughed.
“Well, well; one tries all sorts of things in one’s time,” he said, and looked out at the sky.
Up the street stood the watchmaker, on his stone steps, his face turned up to the zenith, while he shouted his senseless warnings: “The new time! I ask you about the new time, O God the Father!” he repeated.
Two weary stevedores were going homeward. “He’ll drive all poverty out of the world and give us all a new life—that’s the form his madness takes,” said one of them, with a dreary laugh.
“Then he’s got the millennium on the brain?” said the other.
“No, he’s just snarling at the world,” said old Jörgen, behind them. “We shall certainly get a change in the weather.”
“Things are bad with him just now, poor fellow,” said Bjerregrav, shuddering. “It was about this time of the year that he lost his wits.”