greasy state, I called to him straight out:

"For Heaven's sake, man, aren't you going to wipe your mouth?"

He stared at me, wiping his mouth with one hand. "Mouth?" he said.

I tried to turn it off then as a joke, and said: "Haha, I had you there!"
But I was displeased with myself, for all that, and went out of the
brewhouse directly after.

Then I fell to thinking of Frokenen. "I'll make her answer when I give a
greeting," I said to myself. "I'll let her see before very long that I'm
not altogether a fool." There was that business of the well and the
pipe-line, now; what if I were to work out a plan for the whole
installation all complete! I had no instruments to take the height and
fall of the hill ... well, I could make one that would serve. And I set to
work. A wooden tube, with two ordinary lamp-glasses fixed in with putty,
and the whole filled with water.

Soon it was found there were many little things needed seeing to about the
vicarage--odd matters here and there. A stone step to be set straight
again, a wall to be repaired; the bridgeway to the barn had to be
strengthened before the corn could be brought in. The priest liked to have
everything sound and in order about the place--and it was all one to us,
seeing we were paid by the day. But as time went on I grew more and more
impatient of my work-mate's company. It was torture to me, for instance,
to see him pick up a loaf from the table, hold it close in to his chest,
and cut off a slice with a greasy pocket-knife that he was always putting
in his mouth. And then, again, he would go all through the week, from
Sunday to Sunday, without a wash. And in the morning, before the sun was