“To be sure he climbs highest,” said the women. “No one says he doesn’t.”
“Leave him alone,” said Otto; “he’s had a drop too much!”
“Then he should take a walk in the fresh air and not sit there and make himself disagreeable,” said Madam Stolpe, with a good deal of temper.
The Vanishing Man rose with an effort. “Do you say a walk in the fresh air, Madam Stolpe? Yes, if any one can stand the air, by God, it’s Albert Olsen. Those big-nosed masons, what can they do?” He stood with bent head, muttering angrily to himself. “Yes, then we’ll take a walk in the fresh air. I don’t want to have anything to do with your fools’ tricks.” He staggered out through the kitchen door.
“What’s he going to do there?” cried Madam Stolpe, in alarm.
“Oh, he’ll just go down into the yard and turn himself inside out,” said Otto. “He’s a brilliant fellow, but he can’t carry much.”
Pelle, still sitting at table, had been drawing with a pencil on a scrap of paper while the others were arguing. Ellen leaned over his shoulder watching him. He felt her warm breath upon his ear and smiled happily as he used his pencil. Ellen took the drawing when he had finished and pushed it across the table to the others. It showed a thick-set figure of a man, dripping with sweat, pushing a wheelbarrow which supported his belly. “Capitalism—when the rest of us refuse to serve him any longer!” was written below. This drawing made a great sensation. “You’re a deuce of a chap!” cried Stolpe. “I’ll send that to the editor of the humorous page—I know him.”
“Yes, Pelle,” said Lasse proudly, “there’s nothing he can’t do; devil knows where he gets it from, for he doesn’t get it from his father.” And they all laughed.
Carpenter Stolpe’s good lady sat considering the drawing with amazement, quite bewildered, looking first at Pelle’s fingers and then at the drawing again. “I can understand how people can say funny things with their mouths,” she said, “but with their fingers—that I don’t understand. Poor fellow, obliged to push his belly in front of him! It’s almost worse than when I was going to have Victor.”
“Cousin Victor, her youngest, who is so deucedly clever,” said Otto, in explanation, giving Pelle a meaning wink.