Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 02 by Nexø, Martin Andersen, 1869-1954

And then he fell ill. He lay under the tiled roof raving with fever; they had thrown his bed into the loft. "What, isn't he up yet?" said Jeppe, astounded, when he came in to the workshop. "No? Well, he'll soon get up when he gets hungry." It was no joke to take a sick apprentice his meals in bed. But Pelle did not come down.

Once the young master threw all considerations overboard and took some food up to him. "You're making yourself ridiculous," sneered Jeppe; "you'll never be able to manage people like that!" And Madam scolded. But Master Andres whistled until he was out of hearing.

Poor Pelle lay there, in delirium; his little head was full of fancies, more than it would hold. But now the reaction set in, and he lay there stuffing himself with all that was brought him.

The young master sat upstairs a great deal and received enlightenment on many points. It was not his nature to do anything energetically, but he arranged that Pelle's washing should be done in the house, and he took care that Lasse should be sent for.

VIII

Jeppe was related to about half the island, but he was not greatly interested in disentangling his relationship. He could easily go right back to the founder of the family, and trace the generations through two centuries, and follow the several branches of the family from country to town and over the sea and back again, and show that Andres and the judge must be cousins twice removed. But if any insignificant person asked him: "How was it, then--weren't my father and you first cousins?" he would answer brusquely, "Maybe, but the soup grows too thin after a time. This relationship!"

"Then you and I, good Lord! are second cousins, and you are related to the judge as well," Master Andres would say. He did not grudge people any pleasure they could derive from the facts of relationship. Poor people regarded him gratefully--they said he had kind eyes; it was a shame that he should not be allowed to live.

Jeppe was the oldest employer in the town, and among the shoemakers his workshop was the biggest. He was able, too, or rather he had been, and he still possessed the manual skill peculiar to the old days. When it came to a ticklish job he would willingly show them how to get on with it, or plan some contrivance to assist them. Elastic-sided boots and lace-up boots had superseded the old footwear, but honest skill still meant an honest reputation. And if some old fellow wanted a pair of Wellingtons or Bluchers of leather waterproofed with grease, instead of by some new-fangled devilry, he must needs go to Jeppe--no one else could shape an instep as he could. And when it came to handling the heavy dressed leathers for sea-boots there was no one like Jeppe. He was obstinate, and rigidly opposed to everything new, where everybody else was led away by novelty. In this he was peculiarly the representative of the old days, and people respected him as such.