Thereupon the old man said nothing. For a time he began to walk up and down, then he stood still in front of the young man and looked at him for a while almost absently.
"This affair with the cat I have made all right," he said, "but look, Hauke, this place is too small; two people can't stay on it--it is time you got a job!"
"Yes, father," replied Hauke; "I have been thinking something of the sort myself."
"Why?" asked the old man.
"Well, one gets wild inside unless one can let it out on a decent piece of work!"
"Is that so?" said the old man, "and that's why you have killed the Angora cat? That might easily lead to something worse!"
"You may be right, father, but the dikemaster has discharged his farmhand; I could do that work all right!"
The old man began to walk up and down, and meanwhile spat out the black tobacco. "The dikemaster is a blockhead, as stupid as a goose! He is dikemaster only because his father and grandfather have been the same, and on account of his twenty-nine fens. Round Martinmas, when the dike and sluice bills have to be settled, then he feeds the schoolmaster on roast goose and mead and wheat buns, and sits by and nods while the other man runs down the columns of figures with his pen, and says: 'Yes, yes, schoolmaster, God reward you! How finely you calculate!' But when the schoolmaster can't or won't, then he has to go at it himself and sits scribbling and striking out again, his big stupid head growing red and hot, his eyes bulging out like glass balls, as if his little bit of sense wanted to get out that way."
The young man stood up straight in front of his father and marveled at his talking; he had never heard him speak like that. "Yes, God knows," he said, "no doubt he is stupid, but his daughter Elke, she can calculate!"
The old man looked at him sharply.