“That’s a long time ago now. But you must look in again one evening soon. Grandmother looks upon both of you with a favorable eye!” Kalle’s eyes twinkled mischievously.
“How is she, poor body? Has she at all got over the hurt to her eye? Pelle came home the other day and told me that the children had been so unfortunate as to put a stick into her eye. It quite upset me. You had to have the doctor, too!”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that,” said Kalle. “I had moved grandmother’s spinning-wheel myself one morning when I was putting her room to rights, and then I forgot to put it back in its place. Then when she was going to stoop down to pick up something from the floor, the spindle went into her eye; of course she’s used to have everything stand exactly in its place. So really the honor’s due to me.” He smiled all over his face.
Lasse shook his head sympathetically. “And she got over it fairly well?” he asked.
“No; it went altogether wrong, and she lost the sight of that eye.”
Lasse looked at him with disapproval.
Kalle caught himself up, apparently very much horrified. “Eh, what nonsense I’m talking! She lost the blindness of that eye, I ought to have said. Isn’t that all wrong, too? You put somebody’s eye out, and she begins to see! Upon my word, I think I’ll set up as an eye-doctor after this, for there’s not much difficulty in it.”
“What do you say? She’s begun to—? Now you’re too merry! You oughtn’t to joke about everything.”
“Well, well, joking apart, as the prophet said when his wife scratched him—she can really see with that eye now.”
Lasse looked suspiciously at him for a little while before he yielded. “Why, it’s quite a miracle!” he then said.