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Updated: May 24, 2025
"It is only Ellen," said Frederik, and he returned, followed by a tall dark girl with an earnest bearing. She had a veil over her face, and before her mouth her breath showed like a pearly tissue. "Ah, that's the lass!" cried Stolpe, laughing. "What folly we were quite nervous, just as nervous as in the old days. And you're abroad in the streets at this hour of night! And in this weather?"
"They must come of their own accord," she said decidedly. She did not mind for herself, but they had looked down upon Pelle, so it was not more than fair that they should come and make it up. "But I have sent for them," said Pelle. "That was what Lasse Frederik went about. You mustn't have a baby without help from your mother." In less than a couple of hours Madam Stolpe had arrived.
The whole family was in the garden, Lasse Frederik digging, Pelle pruning the espalier round the garden door, and Ellen tying it up. The children were trying to help everybody and were mostly a hindrance. One or other of them was always doing something wrong, treading on the beds or pulling up the plants. How extraordinarily stupid they were! Regular town children!
The Eighteenth Century broke upon a noisy family quarrel in the north of Europe. Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the royal hotspur of all history, and Frederik of Denmark had fallen out. Like their people, they were first cousins, and therefore all the more bent on settling the old question which was the better man.
"And he's lying here instead of being out on the watch for blacklegs?" exclaimed Pelle quite irritably. "You're a nice leader!" "Do you suppose any boy would be so mean as to be a blackleg?" said Lasse Frederik. "No, indeed! But people fetch their own milk from the carts." "Then you must get the drivers to join you." "No, we don't belong to a real union, so they won't support us."
The pale yellow stars blossom out above the hills again, as they did on that first night when we were driving down into the Valders. Frederik leans over the back of the seat, telling us marvellous tales, in his broken English, of the fishing in a certain lake among the mountains, and of the reindeer-shooting on the fjeld beyond it.
Hall, who was then Prime Minister, stepped out on the balcony of the castle, grave and upright, and said, first standing with his back to the Castle, then looking to the right and the left, these words: "King Frederik VII is dead. Long live King Christian IX!" Then the King came forward.
In the evening, when Boy Comfort and Sister had been put to bed, Pelle would take a book and read aloud. Ellen was occupied with some mending or other, and Lasse Frederik, his ears standing out from his head, hung over a chair-back with his eyes fixed upon his father. Although he did not understand the half of it, he followed it attentively until Nature asserted herself, and he fell asleep.
Is it your husband that's chucked you out?" she asked, bending sympathetically over Ellen. "No, the landlord's turned us out!" said Lasse Frederik. "What a funny little figure! And you've got nowhere to sleep to-night? Here, Christian, take and load these things on the cart, and then they can stand under the gateway at home for the night. They'll be quite spoilt by the rain here."
"It is stupid though!" exclaimed Lasse Frederik suddenly. "Why doesn't wool grow on one's legs? Then you'd have none of the bother of shearing the wool off sheep, carding it, spinning it, and knitting stockings." "Oh, what nonsense you're talking!" said Ellen, laughing. "Well, men were hairy once," Lasse Frederik continued. "It was a great pity that they didn't go on being it!"
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