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Updated: June 5, 2025
"It's so warm to-day the stones feel quite burning but you two certainly won't catch fire. Why do you stare in that funny way? Give each other a kiss in the grass, now! There's no harm in it, and it's so pretty to see!" Pelle did not move. But Hanne moved over to him on her knees, put her hands gently round his head, and kissed him.
The old woman was delighted to see him. Hanne was quite frolicsome; she rallied him continually, and it was not long before he had abandoned his firm attitude and allowed himself to be drawn into the most delightful romancing.
"Why should I be forced to dance with anybody, with somebody I don't know at all?" replied Hanne. "I'm only going to dance with you!" She made angry eyes, and looked bewitching in her unapproachableness. Pelle had nothing against being her only partner. He would gladly have fought for her, had it been needful.
"Kind people!" he cried scornfully "they never have anything themselves, and I can't even read how should I learn how to study? Karl can read; he taught himself from the signs in the streets while he was running his errands; and he can write as well. And Hanne has taught Marie a little. But all my life I've only been in the factory."
She reached for her boots, alarmed. "I won't stay here any longer now. One never knows what may happen." She hastily laced up her boots, with a prudish expression on her face. Pelle laughed until the tears stood in his eyes. Hanne raised her head. "That was surely a crane, don't you think so? Stupid bird, always to fly along like that, staring down at everything as though he were short-sighted.
Then at last Pelle made up his mind to go clattering down the stairs to the third story, and along the gallery. "Why have you been so stand-offish to-day?" said Madam Johnsen, making room for him. "You know you are always very welcome. What are all these preliminaries for?" "Pelle is short-sighted; he can't see as far as this," said Hanne, tossing her head.
What was in that? "Mother, mother!" she cried shrilly, leaning far over the rickety rail. Hanne came swiftly up the stairs, with open mouth and red cheeks; and a face peeped out of every little nest. "Now Widow Hanne has taken the plunge," they said. They knew what a point of honor it had been with her to look after her mother and her child unaided. She was a good girl.
When he was tired, Hanne regained her influence over him, and then he went over to see her in the evenings. He knew very well that this would lead to nothing good. To picture for himself a future beside Hanne seemed impossible; for her only the moment existed. Her peculiar nature had a certain power over him that was all.
Hanne was silent and absent; Pelle took her hand in order to make her run up a hillock, but she did not at first notice that he was touching her, and the hand was limp and clammy. She walked on as in a sleep, her whole bearing lifeless and taciturn. "She's dreaming!" said Pelle, and released her hand, offended. It fell lifelessly to her side.
She always wound up by lamenting the change in Hanne; the old woman felt that the girl had forsaken her. "Can you understand what's the matter with her, Pelle? She goes about as if she were asleep, and to everything I say she answers nothing but 'Yes, mother; yes, mother! I could cry, it sounds so strange and empty, like a voice from the grave.
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