"Wouldn't you have done better to buy a cottage-holding with twelve
or fourteen acres of land, and that in a good state of cultivation?"
he asked.

Lasse turned on him impatiently. "Yes, and then a man might stint
and save all his life, and never get beyond cutting off his fly
to mend his seat; he'd most likely spend twice what he made! What
the deuce! I might as well have stayed where I was. Here, it's true,
I do work harder and I have to use my brains more, but then there's
a future before me. When I've once got the place under cultivation
this will be a farm to hold its own with any of them!" Lasse gazed
proudly over his holding; in his mind's eye it was waving with grain
and full of prime cattle.

"It would carry six horses and a score or two of cows easily," he
said aloud. "That would bring in a nice income! What do you think,
Karna?"

"I think the dinner will be cold," said Karna, laughing. She was
perfectly happy.

At dinner Lasse proposed that Pelle should send his clothes to
be washed and mended at home. "You've certainly got enough to do
without that," he said indulgently. "Butcher Jensen goes to market
every Saturday; he'd take it for you and put it down by the church,
and it would be odd if on a Sunday no one from the heath went to
church, who could bring the bundle back to us."

But Pelle suddenly turned stubborn and made no reply.