The Court lay by the high road some distance away from the suburb. But all Majängen was of course there. The crowd stretched out as far as the yard. Peter stepped forward with half-closed eyes and a good-tempered grin on his face. Nobody could say he looked frightened. He slapped some of the men on the back:
“Make room, boys, nothing is going to happen without me, anyhow.”
A Swedish crowd is harmless when it is sober. People stared and made way. But a coarse voice was heard:
“He ought to be hanged....”
Peter had now reached the hall. On the other side of the long table with the judge and the jurymen sat Frida. She had a bundle in her arms. She stared Peter straight in the eyes and lifted up the child so that he should really see it. Then a murmur passed through the hall and the jurymen put their close-cropped heads together. Peter turned away his eyes at once, shrugged his shoulders, and bowed to the judge as if to say: “As between gentlemen, cut the whole thing short.”
Through his friends he had conveyed to the judge the truth about Frida Öberg: An easy-going wench, maid at Selambshof, an affair with the fraudulent bailiff, dismissed with him, vengeance, blackmail, etc.
The baby began to cry. Did Frida pinch it for effect or not? The judge, who looked as if he were at a meeting of shareholders, glanced up from his papers with a wry face:
“Is it necessary to bring the child here?”
Frida jumped up, grateful for this opportunity to make a demonstration. “What am I to do when I am poor and alone, sir? I have nobody to look after the poor boy.”
The judge remarked in a dry voice that he had been informed she had a laundry and that her sister was working with her.