Jeppe laughed. “Now, that’s enough, really; God knows neither of you will give in to the other.”
“Well, and I’ve no intention of trampling a tailor to death, if it can anyhow be avoided—but one can’t always see them.” Baker Jörgen carefully lifted his great wooden shoes. “But they are not men. Now is there even one tailor in the town who has been overseas? No, and there were no men about while the tailor was being made. A woman stood in a draught at the front door, and there she brought forth the tailor.” The baker could not stop himself when once he began to quiz anybody; now that Sören was married, he had recovered all his good spirits.
Bjerregrav could not beat this. “You can say what you like about tailors,” he succeeded in saying at last. “But people who bake black bread are not respected as handicraftsmen—no more than the washerwoman! Tailoring and shoemaking, they are proper crafts, with craftman’s tests, and all the rest.”
“Yes, shoemaking of course is another thing,” said Jeppe.
“But as many proverbs and sayings are as true of you as of us,” said Bjerregrav, desperately blinking.
“Well, it’s no longer ago than last year that Master Klausen married a cabinet-maker’s daughter. But whom must a tailor marry? His own serving-maid?”
“Now how can you, father!” sighed Master Andres. “One man’s as good as another.”
“Yes, you turn everything upside down! But I’ll have my handicraft respected. To-day all sorts of agents and wool-merchants and other trash settle in the town and talk big. But in the old days the handicraftsmen were the marrow of the land. Even the king himself had to learn a handicraft. I myself served my apprenticeship in the capital, and in the workshop where I was a prince had learned the trade. But, hang it all, I never heard of a king who learned tailoring!”
They were capable of going on forever in this way, but, as the dispute was at its worst, the door opened, and Wooden-leg Larsen stumped in, filling the workshop with fresh air. He was wearing a storm-cap and a blue pilot-coat. “Good evening, children!” he said gaily, and threw down a heap of leather ferrules and single boots on the window-bench.
His entrance put life into all. “Here’s a playboy for us! Welcome home! Has it been a good summer?”