A clear child’s voice was calling from the bedroom more and more persistently: “Man! Good-morning, man!”
It was Sister, sitting up in Ellen’s bed and playing with a feather that she had pulled out of the corner of the down-quilt. She readily allowed herself to be kissed, and sat there with pouting mouth and the funniest little wrinkled nose. “You’re man!” she said insinuatingly.
“Yes, that’s true enough,” answered Pelle, laughing: “but what man?”
“Man!” she repeated, nodding gravely.
Sister shared Ellen’s bed now. At the foot of the big bed stood her own little cot, which had also been Lasse Frederik’s, and in it lay——. Well, Pelle turned to the other side of the room, where Lasse Frederik lay snoring in a small bed, with one arm beneath his head. He had kicked off the quilt, and lay on his stomach in a deep sleep, with his limbs extended carelessly. The little fellow was well built, thought Pelle.
“Now, lazy-bones, you’d better be thinking of getting up!” cried Pelle, pulling him by the leg.
The boy turned slowly. When he saw his father, he instantly became wide awake, and raised his arm above his head as though to ward off a blow.
“There’s no box on the ears in the air, my boy,” said Pelle, laughing. “The game only begins to-day!”
Lasse Frederik continued to hold his arm in the same position, and lay gazing indifferently out into the front room, as if he had no idea to what his father was referring; but his face was scarlet.
“Don’t you even say good-morning to your father?” said Ellen, whereupon he sullenly extended his hand and then turned his face to the wall. He was vexed at his behavior of the day before, and perhaps expected a blowing-up. On a nail above his head hung his blouse and cap.