Father Lasse would have wept tears of blood to see his boy as he
now walked along the streets, full of uncertainty and uneasy
imitativeness, wearing his best coat on a workday, and yet
disorderly in his dress.

Yonder he goes, sauntering along with a pair of boots, his fingers
thrust through the string of the parcel, whistling with an air of
bravado. Now and again he makes a grimace and moves cautiously--when
his trousers rub the sensitive spots of his body. He has had a
bad day. In the morning he was passing a smithy, and allowed the
splendid display of energy within, half in the firelight and half
in the shadow, to detain him. The flames and the clanging of the
metal, the whole lively uproar of real work, fascinated him, and he
had to go in and ask whether there was an opening for an apprentice.
He was not so stupid as to tell them where he came from, but when
he got home, Jeppe had already been told of it! But that is soon
forgotten, unless, indeed, his trousers rub against his sore places.
Then he remembers it; remembers that in this world everything has
to be paid for; there is no getting out of things; once one begins
anything one has to eat one's way through it, like the boy in
the fairy-tale. And this discovery is, in the abstract, not so
strikingly novel to Pelle.

He has, as always, chosen the longest way, rummaging about back
yards and side streets, where there is a possibility of adventure;
and all at once he is suddenly accosted by Albinus, who is now
employed by a tradesman. Albinus is not amusing. He has no right
to play and loiter about the warehouse in the aimless fashion that
is possible out-of-doors; nor to devote himself to making a ladder
stand straight up in the air while he climbs up it. Not a word can