“Who the devil would reign over us then? The Germans would soon come hurrying over! That’s a most wicked thing, that Danish people should want to hand over their country to the enemy! All I wonder is that they don’t shoot them down without trial! They’d never be admitted to Bornholm.”
“That we don’t really know!” The young master smiled.
“To the devil with them—we’d all go down to the shore and shoot them: they should never land alive!”
“They are just a miserable rabble, the lot of them,” said Jeppe. “I should very much like to know whether there is a decent citizen among them.”
“Naturally, it’s always the poor who complain of poverty,” said Bjerregrav. “So the thing never comes to an end.”
Baker Jörgen was the only one of them who had anything to do. Things would have to be bad indeed before the people stopped buying his black bread. He even had more to do than usual; the more people abstained from meat and cheese, the more bread they ate. He often hired Jeppe’s apprentices so that they might help him in the kneading.
But he was not in a happy frame of mind. He was always shouting his abuse of Sören through the open doors, because the latter would not go near his buxom young wife. Old Jörgen had taken him and put him into bed with her with his own hands, but Sören had got out of the business by crying and trembling like a new-born calf.
“D’you think he’s perhaps bewitched?” asked Master Andres.
“She’s young and pretty, and there’s not the least fault to be found with her—and we’ve fed him with eggs right through the winter. She goes about hanging her head, she gets no attention from him. ‘Marie! Sören!’ I cry, just to put a little life into them—he ought to be the sort of devil I was, I can tell you! She laughs and blushes, but Sören, he simply sneaks off. It’s really a shame—so dainty as she is too, in every way. Ah, it ought to have been in my young days, I can tell you!”
“You are still young enough, Uncle Jörgen!” laughed Master Andres.