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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.
She felt for his hand and held it in both hers like a blind person trying to recognize, and she looked at him with her expressionless eyes that were already dimmed by approaching death. "You still have a good hand," she said slowly, with the far-sounding voice of old age. "Hanne should have taken you, and then things would have been very different."
"I come from outside all this from the terrible winter, Hanne, where the children are crying for bread, and the women dying of starvation, and the men go about with idle hands and look on the ground because they are ashamed of their unemployment!" "But why? It is still summer. Only look how cheerful every one is! Take me, then, Pelle!"
They had forgotten everything, and were all admiration. But Hanne stood staring with horror, and suddenly burst into sobs. "Come, come, Hanne!" said her mother, clapping her on the back. "You have bought a dress for yourself that's not so dreadful! Youth will have its rights." "No, mother, no, I didn't buy it at all!
Why should I have taken Hanne?" "Oh, I don't know ... Hanne...." Marie stopped, listened, and suddenly wrenched the window open. Down in the "Ark" a door slammed, and a long hooting sound rose up from below, sounding just like a husky scream from the crazy Vinslev's flute or like the wind in the long corridors.
The times when I might have amused myself he'd stolen from me with his talk of the future, and now I sit there turning old soldiers' trousers that fill the room with filth, and when I do two a day I can earn a mark. And Hanne goes about like a sleep-walker. Happiness! Is there a soul in the 'Ark' that didn't begin with a firm belief in something better?
He did not dare to drive her away, for she would take that to heart, and would go about offended all the rest of the day; so he would run below to fetch a roll of white bread. Pelle felt that he was making headway; and he was conscious of his own youth. He was continually in the rosiest of humors, and even Hanne could not throw any real shadow over his existence.
"Shan't we go, then?" she said impatiently, and she quickly dragged him away. At the doorway the stranger came to meet them and bowed before Hanne. She did not look at him, but her left arm twitched as though she wanted to lay it across his shoulders. "My sweetheart isn't dancing any more; she is tired," said Pelle shortly, and he led her away.
Hanne laughed loudly. "She expects him every Sunday, but she has never seen him yet!" "Well, well, that's hardly a thing to laugh about," said the old woman. "She's happy in her delusions, and her pension keeps her from need." Pelle awoke to find Hanne standing by his bed and pulling his nose, and imitating his comical grimaces. She had come in over the roof.
Hanne was nervous; she kept between Pelle and her mother, and could not stand still. "No, let's go away somewhere anywhere!" she said, laughing in bewilderment. Pelle wanted to treat them to coffee, so they went on till they found a tent where there was room for them. Hallo! There was the hurdy-gurdy man from home, on a roundabout, nodding to him as he went whirling round.
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