Jeppe.  No, wife, one is enough; we must have one at home who can give us a hand and do our work.

Nille.  Oh, at such work as that a man cannot do more than live from hand to mouth.  Rasmus Berg, who is a scholar, can do our family more good, with his brain, in an hour than the other in a year.

Jeppe.  That makes no difference, little mother; our fields must be tilled and our crops looked after.  We can’t possibly get along without Jacob.  Look, here he is now, coming back again!

SCENE 5

Enter Jacob.

Jacob.  Ha! ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!  My brother may be a very learned man, but he is a great simpleton for all that.

Nille.  You wicked rascal!  Do you call your brother a simpleton?

Jacob.  I really don’t know what I ought to call such a thing, little mother.  It rained until it poured, and yet he let me walk along behind him with the cloak on my arm.

Jeppe.  Couldn’t you have been civil enough to have said, “Mossur, it is raining.  Won’t you put on your cloak?”

Jacob.  It seems to me, little father, it would have been very strange for me to say to the person whose parents had spent so much money upon him to teach him wisdom and cleverness, when so much rain was falling on him that he was wet to his shirt, “It is raining, sir; won’t you put on your cloak?” He had no need of my warning; the rain gave him warning enough.

Jeppe.  Did you walk the whole way, then, with the cloak on your arm?

Jacob.  Marry, I did not; I wrapped myself up comfortably in the cloak; so my clothes are perfectly dry.  I understand that sort of thing better than he, though I’ve not spent so much money learning wisdom.  I grasped it at once, although I don’t know one Latin letter from another.

Jeppe.  Your brother was plunged in thought, as deeply learned folk usually are.

Jacob.  Ha, ha! the devil split such learning!

Jeppe.  Shut up, you rogue, or shame on your mouth!  What does it matter if your brother is absent-minded about such things as that, when in so many other matters he displays his wisdom and the fruit of his studies?

Jacob.  Fruit of his studies!  I shall tell you what happened next on our trip.  When we came to Jeronimus’s gate, he went right to the side where the watch-dog stood, and he would have had his learned legs well caulked if I had not dragged him to the other side; for watch-dogs are no respecters of persons:  they measure all strangers with the same stick, and bite at random whatever legs they get hold of, whether Greek or Latin.  When he entered the court, Mossur Rasmus Berg absent-mindedly went into the stable and shouted, “Hey, is Jeronimus at home?” But the cows all turned their tails to him and none of them would answer a word.  I am certain that if any of them could have talked, they would have said, “What a confounded lunk-head that lad must be!”