plainly going up the stairs, one after another, taking off their
wooden shoes and knocking on the door of the office--yes, they
wanted to see about an advance on their wages. And Lasse scratched
the back of his head, looked at them thoughtfully, and said: "Not on
any account, you'd only waste it on drink." But he gave it to them
finally, for all that. "One is much too good-natured," he said to
Pelle....

For Pelle had bidden farewell to cobbling, and was living at home
as a landowner's son. Really, Pelle managed the whole business--only
it wouldn't do to say so. And at the Christmas feast he danced with
the buxom farmer's daughters. There was whispering in the corners
when Pelle made his appearance; but he went straight across the room
and invited the Pastor's daughter to a dance, so that she lost her
breath, and more besides, and begged him on the spot to marry her....

He hurried onward, still dreaming; longing drew him onward, and
before he knew it he had travelled some miles along the high-road.
The road he now turned into led him by pine woods and heath-covered
hills; the houses he passed were poorer, and the distance from one
to another was increasing.

Pelle took a turning a little farther on, which, to the best of his
knowledge, led in the required direction, and hurried forward with
awakened senses. The landscape was only half revealed by the summer
night, but it was all as familiar as the mends in the back of Father
Lasse's waistcoat, although he had never been here before. The
poverty-stricken landscape spoke to him as with a mother's voice.
Among these clay-daubed huts, the homes of poor cultivators who
waged war upon the rocky ground surrounding their handful of soil,