Karna beamed with joy, but Pelle could not enter into their mood. He was disillusioned; the descent from his dream to this naked reality was too great. And a feeling rose within him of dull resentment against this endless labor, which, inexperienced though he was, was yet part of his very being by virtue of the lives of ten, nay, twenty generations. He himself had not waged the hard-fought war against the soil, but he had as a matter of course understood everything that had to do with tilling the soil ever since he could crawl, and his hands had an inborn aptitude for spade and rake and plough. But he had not inherited his father’s joy in the soil; his thoughts had struck out in a new direction. Yet this endless bondage to the soil lay rooted in him, like a hatred, which gave him a survey unknown to his father. He was reasonable; he did not lose his head at the sight of seventy acres of land, but asked what they contained. He himself was not aware of it, but his whole being was quick with hostility toward the idea of spending one’s strength in this useless labor; and his point of view was as experienced as though he had been Lasse’s father.
“Wouldn’t you have done better to buy a cottage-holding with twelve or fourteen acres of land, and that in a good state of cultivation?” he asked.
Lasse turned on him impatiently. “Yes, and then a man might stint and save all his life, and never get beyond cutting off his fly to mend his seat; he’d most likely spend twice what he made! What the deuce! I might as well have stayed where I was. Here, it’s true, I do work harder and I have to use my brains more, but then there’s a future before me. When I’ve once got the place under cultivation this will be a farm to hold its own with any of them!” Lasse gazed proudly over his holding; in his mind’s eye it was waving with grain and full of prime cattle.
“It would carry six horses and a score or two of cows easily,” he said aloud. “That would bring in a nice income! What do you think, Karna?”
“I think the dinner will be cold,” said Karna, laughing. She was perfectly happy.
At dinner Lasse proposed that Pelle should send his clothes to be washed and mended at home. “You’ve certainly got enough to do without that,” he said indulgently. “Butcher Jensen goes to market every Saturday; he’d take it for you and put it down by the church, and it would be odd if on a Sunday no one from the heath went to church, who could bring the bundle back to us.”
But Pelle suddenly turned stubborn and made no reply.
“I just thought it would be too much for you to wash and mend for yourself,” said Lasse patiently. “In town one must have other things to think about, and then it isn’t really proper work for a man!”
“I’ll do it myself all right,” murmured Pelle ungraciously.
Now he would show them that he could keep himself decent. It was partly in order to revenge himself for his own neglect that he refused the offer.