“We shall come and look you up very soon,” he called out after his brother.
When after a little while he returned to his room, the note lay upon the bed. Kalle must have seen his opportunity to put it there, conjurer that he was. Lasse put it aside to give to Kalle’s wife, when an occasion presented itself.
Long before the time, Lasse was on the lookout for Pelle. He found the solitude wearisome, now that he was used to having the boy about him from morning till night. At last he came, out of breath with running, for he had longed to get home too.
Nothing either terrible or remarkable had happened at school. Pelle had to give a circumstantial account, point by point, “Well, what can you do?” the master had asked, taking him by the ear—quite kindly, of course. “I can pull the mad bull to the water without Father Lasse helping at all,” Pelle had answered, and then the whole class had laughed.
“Yes, yes, but can you read?”
No, Pelle could not do that—“or else I shouldn’t have come here,” he was on the point of adding. “It was a good thing you didn’t answer that,” said Lasse; “but what more then?” Well, then Pelle was put upon the lowest bench, and the boy next him was set to teach him his letters.
“Do you know them, then?”
No, Pelle did not know them that day, but when a couple of weeks had passed, he knew most of them, and wrote them with chalk on the posts. He had not learned to write, but his hand could imitate anything he had seen, and he drew the letters just as they stood in print in the spelling-book.
Lasse went and looked at them during his work, and had them repeated to him endlessly; but they would not stick properly. “What’s that one there?” he was perpetually asking.
Pelle answered with a superior air: “That? Have you forgotten it already? I knew that after I’d only seen it once! That’s M.”