"Ei, ei.... Anything hereabout for a blind man to see?"
The boys from the factory could contain themselves no longer; one of them barged another over against the old man, while the rest chuckled and cackled and quacked like a yard full of mixed poultry.
"Petrea--here, Petrea, what are you looking at?"
"Little devils!" said Trane, gloating over them all the same. Lund, the scientific draper, laughed too, but schoolmaster Lange, recollecting his lessons at the drawing school, shrank back a little.
Petrea strode untroubled through the crowd, her mouth hanging open, and the old man trailing behind at her skirts like some uncouth goblin child. His moleskin breeches were of enormous capacity; the seat hung down behind to his calves. When he stood still, the superfluous folds fluttered in the wind like a rag-and-patch tent at a fair.
"Is't that way there, Petrea?" He pointed with his stick, and leant over, listening.
It was growing dusk. Folk were beginning to shiver a little in the evening air. And there was nothing amusing after all in the sight of these two poor vagrants. What was the time?
When Egholm opened the furnace door, the column of smoke shone like gold, and his face glowed fantastically big and red. Still a few more degrees were needed on the manometer--just a few. He stoked away, till the sparks flew like shooting stars across the sky. A fever seized him; he threw on coal with his bare hands, and found himself grasping with all ten fingers at a single lump.
Every second he glanced over at the shore, though it was impossible to distinguish anything clearly now.
Trembling, he heard a burst of laughter, that rolled like a wave along the line.
"Look straight ahead, Petrea, pretty Petrea, do!"
Heaven be thanked--they were not laughing at him, after all. If only the coals had been a little better. But it was dust and refuse, every handful.
The doctor cast a final glance at the water, where the glow from the fire played like a shoal of red fish; then he walked away with little hurried steps.
"I'm off," said Lange. "I don't see what there is to stand about here for."
What was there to stand about there for? No one could find any satisfactory answer.
It was dark and cold, and wife and supper were waiting at home.