“Yes. No one need be ashamed of submitting to superior brute force.”
So he went. But it cost him an enormous effort, and on that day in the week it was better to leave him alone.
Marie’s fate lay no longer like a heavy burden upon Pelle; time had taken the bitterness out of it. He could recall without self-reproach his life with her and her two brothers in the “Ark,” and often wondered what had become of the latter. No one could give him any information about them.
One day, during the midday rest, he went on his bicycle out to Morten with a message from Ellen. In Morten’s sitting-room, a hunched-up figure was sitting with its back to the window, staring down at the floor. His clothes hung loosely upon him, and his thin hair was colorless. He slowly raised a wasted face as he looked toward the door. Pelle had already recognized him from his maimed right hand, which had only the thumb and one joint of the forefinger. He no longer hid it away, but let it lie upon his thin knee.
“Why, good-day, Peter!” exclaimed Pelle in surprise, holding out his hand to take the other’s left hand. Peter drew the hand out of his pocket and held it out. It was a dead, maimed lump with some small protuberances like rudiments of knuckles, that Pelle found in his hand. Peter looked into his face without moving a muscle of his own, and there was only a little gleam in his eyes when Pelle started.
“What in the world are you starting for?” he said dryly. “I should think any one might have known that a fellow couldn’t mind a shearing-machine with one hand. I knew it just as well as everybody else in the factory, and expected it every day; and at last I had to shut my eyes. Confound it, I often thought, won’t there soon be an end to it? And then one day there it was!”
Pelle shivered. “Didn’t you get any accident insurance?” he asked in order to say something.
“Of course I did! The whole council gathered on account of my humble self, and I was awarded three thousand krones (£170) as entirely invalided. Well, the master possessed nothing and had never insured me, so it never got beyond the paper. But anyhow it’s a great advance upon the last time, isn’t it? Our party has accomplished something!” He looked mockingly at Pelle. “You ought to give a cheer for paper reforms!”