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Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 02 by Martin Andersen Nexø
page 44 of 362 (12%)
hundred--and no cheating, I tell you!"

No, Pelle would not cheat--he would neither look nor count short--
so much depended on this beginning. But he solemnly promised
himself to use his legs to some purpose; they should all be caught,
one after another! He finished his counting and took his cap from
his eyes. No one was to be seen. "Say 'peep'!" he cried; but no
one answered. For half an hour Pelle searched among timbers and
warehouses, and at last he slipped away home and to bed. But he
dreamed, that night, that he caught them all, and they elected
him as their leader for all future time.

The town did not meet him with open arms, into which he could fall,
with his childlike confidence, and be carried up the ladder. Here,
apparently, one did not talk about the heroic deeds which elsewhere
gave a man foothold; here such things merely aroused scornful
laughter. He tried it again and again, always with something new,
but the answer was always the same--"Farmer!" His whole little
person was overflowing with good-will, and he became deplorably
dejected.

Pelle soon perceived that his whole store of ammunition was
crumbling between his hands, and any respect he had won at home,
on the farm or in the village, by his courage and good nature,
went for nothing here. Here other qualities counted; there was a
different jargon, the clothes were different, and people went about
things in a different way. Everything he had valued was turned to
ridicule, even down to his pretty cap with its ear-flaps and its
ribbon adorned with representations of harvest implements. He had
come to town so calmly confident in himself--to make the painful
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