"Well, God help you, my boy," said the old man, when they had just left the house, "if that man is to make the world clear to you!"
But Hauke replied calmly: "Never mind, father; everything will turn out all right."
Hauke had not been wrong in his judgment. The world, or what the world meant to him, grew clearer to his mind, the longer he stayed in this house--perhaps all the more, the less he was helped by a wiser insight and the more he had to depend on his own powers with which he had from the beginning helped himself. There was someone in the house, however, whom he did not seem to suit; that was Ole Peters, the head man, a good worker and a great talker. The former lazy and stupid but stocky hired man had been more to his liking, whose back he could load calmly with a barrel of oats and whom he could knock about to his heart's content. Hauke, who was still more silent, but who surpassed him mentally, he could not treat in the same way; Hauke had too strange a way of looking at him. Nevertheless he managed to pick out tasks which might have been dangerous for the young man's yet undeveloped body; and when the head man would say: "You ought to have seen fat Nick, he could do it without any trouble at all," then Hauke would work with all his might and finish the task, although with difficulty. It was lucky for him that Elke usually could hinder this, either by herself or through her father. One may ask what it is that binds people who are complete strangers to each other; perhaps--well, they were both born arithmeticians, and the girl could not bear to see her comrade ruined by rough work.
The conflict between head man and second man did not grow less when after Martinmas the different dike bills came in for revision.
It happened on a May evening, but the weather was like November; inside the house one could hear the surf roar outside from behind the dike.
"Hey, Hauke," said the master of the house, "come in; now is your chance to show if you can do arithmetic!"
"Master," Hauke replied; "I'm supposed to feed the young cattle first."
"Elke!" called the dikemaster; "where are you, Elke? Go and tell Ole to feed the young cattle; I want Hauke to calculate!"
So Elke hurried into the stable and gave the order to the head man who was just busy hanging the harness used during the day back in place.
Ole Peters whipped the post beside which he had been busying himself with a bridle, as if he wanted to beat it to pieces: "The devil take that cursed scribbler!"