And he thought of the people Wistik had shown him. "Well, but what of it?" said Marjon, merrily. "We get our living out of them. If they only give, I don't care a rap. Kees is much uglier, and you laugh about it as much as I do. Then why don't you laugh at the snobs?" Johannes meditated a long time, and then replied: "Keesje never makes me angry; but sometimes, when he looks awfully like a man, then I have to cry over him, because he is such a poor, dirty little fellow. But those people make me angry because they fancy themselves to be so much." Marjon looked at him very earnestly, and said: "What a good boy you are! As to the people--the public--why, I've always been taught to get as much out of 'em as I could. I don't care for them so much as I care for their money. I make fun of them. But you do not, and that's why you're better. That's why I like you." And she pressed her fair head, with its glossy, short-cut hair, closer against his shoulder, thinking a little seriously about those hard words, "no foolishness." They were happy days--that free life, the fun of earning the pennies, and the beautiful, late-summer weather amid the mountains. But the nights were less happy. Oh! what damp, dirty rooms and beds they had to use, because Fair-people could not, for even once, afford to have anything better. They were so rank with onions, and frying fat, and things even worse! On the walls, near the pillows, were suspicious stains; and the thick bed-covers were so damp, and warm, and much used! Also, without actual reason for it, but merely from imagination, Johannes felt creepy all over when their resting-place was recommended to them, with exaggerated praise, as a "very tidy room." Marjon took all this much more calmly, and always fell asleep in no time, while Johannes sometimes lay awake for hours, restless and shrinking because of the uncleanliness. "It's nothing, if only you don't think about it," said Marjon, "and these people always live in this way." And what astonished Johannes still more in Marjon was that she dared to step up so pluckily to the German functionaries, constables, officers, and self-conceited citizens. It is fair to say that Johannes was afraid of such people. A railway official with a gruff, surly voice; a policeman with his absolutely inexorable manner; a puffed-out, strutting peacock of an officer, looking down upon the world about him, right and left; a red-faced, self-asserting man, with his moustache trained up high, and with ring-covered fingers, calling vociferously for champagne, and appearing very much satisfied with himself,--all these Marjon delighted to ridicule, but Johannes felt a secret dread of them. He was as much afraid of all these beings as of strange, wild animals; and he could not understand Marjon's calm impudence toward them.