“Let me tell you, father, that it’s not me that sent for you, but Pelle; and if you don’t give him your hand and say you’ve done him an injustice, we shall never be good friends again!”
“Upon my word, she’s the same confounded way of taking the bull by the horns that she always had!” said Stolpe, without looking at her. “Well, I suppose I may as well give in at once, and own that I’ve played the fool. Shall we agree to let bygones be bygones, son-in-law?” extending his hand to Pelle.
When once the reconciliation was effected, Stolpe became quite cheerful. “I never dreamt I should see you so soon, least of all with a baby!” he said contentedly, stroking Ellen’s face with his rough hand.
“No, she’s always been his darling, and father’s often been tired of it,” said Madam Stolpe. “But men make themselves so hard!”
“Rubbish, mother!” growled Stolpe. “Women will always talk nonsense!”
Time had left its mark upon them both. There had been a certain amount of unemployment in his trade, and Stolpe was getting on in years and had a difficulty in keeping up with the young men on the scaffolding. Their clothes showed that they were not so prosperous as formerly; but Stolpe was still chairman of his trade union and a highly respected man within the Movement.
“And now, my boy,” he said suddenly, placing his hands on Pelle’s shoulders, “you must explain to me what it is you’re doing this time. I hear you’ve begun to stir up men’s feelings again.”
Pelle told him about his great plan for coöperative works. The old man knew indeed a good deal about it; it appeared that he had followed Pelle’s movements from a distance.
“That’s perhaps not so out of the way,” he said. “We might squeeze capital out of existence just as quietly, if we all bestirred ourselves. But you must get the Movement to join you; and it must be made clear that every one who doesn’t support his own set is a black-leg.”
“_I have_ got a connection, but it goes rather slowly,” said Pelle.
“Then we must stir them up a little. I say, that queer fellow—Brun, I think you call him—doesn’t he live with you?”
“He isn’t a queer fellow,” said Pelle, laughing. “We can go up and see him.”
Brun and Stolpe very soon found something to talk about. They were of the same age, and had witnessed the first days of the Movement, each from his own side. Madam Stolpe came several times and pulled her husband by the coat: they ought to be going home.