Jeppe picked up the five boots for the right foot, one after another, turned back the uppers, and held heels and soles in a straight line before his eyes. “A bungler has had these in hand,” he growled, and then he set to work on the casing for the wooden leg. “Well, did the layer of felt answer?” Larsen suffered from cold in his amputated foot.
“Yes; I’ve not had cold feet any more.”
“Cold feet!” The baker struck himself on the loins and laughed.
“Yes, you can say what you like, but every time my wooden leg gets wet I get a cold in the head!”
“That’s the very deuce!” cried Jörgen, and his great body rolled like a hippopotamus. “A funny thing, that!”
“There are many funny things in the world,” stammered Bjerregrav. “When my brother died, my watch stopped at that very moment—it was he who gave it me.”
Wooden-leg Larsen had been through the whole kingdom with his barrel-organ, and had to tell them all about it; of the railway- trains which travelled so fast that the landscape turned round on its own axis, and of the great shops and places of amusement in the capital.
“It must be as it will,” said Master Andres. “But in the summer I shall go to the capital and work there!”
“In Jutland—that’s where they have so many wrecks!” said the baker. “They say everything is sand there! I’ve heard that the country is shifting under their feet—moving away toward the east. Is it true that they have a post there that a man must scratch himself against before he can sit down?”
“My sister has a son who has married a Jutland woman and settled down there,” said Bjerregrav. “Have you seen anything of them?”