So they slink into the workshop as soon as it begins to grow dark, and they take out the key and hang it on the nail in the entry, in order to deceive Jeppe, and then they secretly make a fire in the stove, placing a screen in front of it, so that Jeppe shall not see the light from it when he makes his rounds past the workshop windows. They crouch together on the ledge at the bottom of the stove, each with an arm round the other’s shoulder, and Morten tells Pelle about the books he has read.
“Why do you do nothing but read those stupid books?” asks Pelle, when he has listened for a time.
“Because I want to know something about life and about the world,” answers Morten, out of the darkness.
“Of the world?” says Pelle, in a contemptuous tone. “I want to go out into the world and see things—what’s in the books is only lies. But go on.”
And Morten goes on, good-natured as always. And in the midst of his narrative something suddenly occurs to him, and he pulls a paper packet from his breast-pocket: “That’s chocolate from Bodil,” he says, and breaks the stick in two.
“Where had she put it?” asks Pelle.
“Under the sheet—I felt something hard under my back when I lay down.”
The boys laugh, while they nibble at the chocolate. Suddenly Pelle says: “Bodil, she’s a child-seducer! She enticed Hans Peter away from Stone Farm—and he was only fifteen!”
Morten does not reply; but after a time his head sinks on Pelle’s shoulder—his body is twitching.
“Well, you are seventeen,” says Pelle, consoling. “But it’s silly all the same; she might well be your mother—apart from her age.” And they both laugh.