CHAPTER III.
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES That was a dangerous corner, where the wide street leading to the grammar school crossed the narrow one that led to the board school; and, on the days when the afternoon hours for the latter began just when the grammar school's long morning was over, it might happen that the free, exuberant spirits of those who were leaving school came into collision with the heavier and more bitter mood of those who were on their way to it.
Ludvig Veyergang, with his sealskin satchel on his back, had already travelled this road for several years.

He had been nicknamed the Ostrich, because of his little head with the bird-like nose, his long bare neck, and the way he walked.

When he met Nikolai, he pretended not to know him, and Nikolai whistled and clattered with his shoes on the pavement.
The board school's new slide ran along the gutter a good way out into the grammar school street.

It was the product of the joint work of many for a whole week, and fate willed that Nikolai, at the head of a string of comrades, should come full speed down it, hallooing and shouting, just as Ludvig Veyergang and a few others came round the corner.

Young Veyergang received a push that made him drop his pencil-case; and pens, lead and slate pencils lay strewn over the ground.
"Pick them up, you beggar!" he cried to Nikolai, for it was he who had knocked up against him.