“Mouse, mouse! Give me a gold tooth Instead of a bone tooth!”
“Are you going to do anything now, father?” asked Sister, running up to him.
“You’re always so busy,” she said sulkily. “Are you going to keep on all your life?”
Pelle’s conscience smote him. “No, I’m not very busy,” he said quickly. “I can stay with you for a little. What shall we do?”
Little Anna brought her large rag doll, and began to drag chairs into position.
“No, that’s so stupid!” said Lasse Frederik. “Tell us about the time you minded the cows, father! About the big mad bull!” And Pelle told them stories of his childhood—about the bull and Father Lasse, the farmer of Stone Farm and Uncle Kalle with his thirteen children and his happy disposition. The big farm, the country life, the stone-quarry and the sea—they all made up a fairy-story for the two children of the pavement; the boy Pelle’s battle with the great oxen for the supremacy, his wonderful capture of the twenty-five-öre piece—each incident was more exciting than the one before it. Most exciting of all was the story of the giant Eric, who became an idiot from a blow. “That was in those days,” said Pelle, nodding; “it wouldn’t happen like that now.”
“What a lot you have seen!” said Ellen, who had come home while they were talking, and was sitting knitting. “I can hardly understand how you managed—a little fellow like that! How I should like to have seen you!”
“Father’s big!” exclaimed Sister appreciatively. Lasse Frederik was a little more reserved. It was so tiresome always to be outdone, and he would like to have found room for a parenthesis about his own exploits. “I say, there’s a big load of corn in the cabman’s gateway,” he said, to show that he too understood country life.
“That’s not corn,” said Pelle; “it’s hay—clover hay. Don’t you even know what corn’s like?”
“We call it corn,” answered the boy confidently, “and it is corn too, for it has those tassels at the ends.”
“The ears, you mean! But those are on coarse grass too, and, besides, corn is descended from grass. Haven’t you ever really been into the country?”
“We were once going, and meant to stay a whole week, but it went wrong with mother’s work. I’ve been right out to the Zoological Gardens, though.”