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"Yes," replied Hanne breathlessly, "yes, why not? If one can beg one can do that!" She ran out onto the gallery and tore away a few bits of trellis, so that the sound re-echoed through the court. People watched her out of all the dark windows. Widow Hanne had knocked off the head of her pride! Then they sat down to their soup, the old woman and the child.
But Hanne put the things together and threw them into the corner by the stove. "You are ill!" said her mother, gazing at her searchingly; "your eyes are blazing like fire." The darkness descended, and they went to bed. People burned no useless lights in those days, and it was certainly best to be in bed.
"That I don't know, and it's all the same to me only it must be something I don't know all about. Everything is so familiar if one is poor one knows every stitch of one's clothes by heart; one can watch them wearing out. If you'd only been a sailor, Pelle!" "Have you seen him again?" asked Pelle. Hanne laughingly shook her head. "No; but I believe something will happen something splendid.
He stood still in the tunnel-like entry; Hanne herself stood in the midst of a circle, and the children were dancing round her and singing: "I looked from the lofty mountain Down over vale and lea, And I saw a ship come sailing, Sailing, sailing, I saw a ship come sailing, And on it were lordlings three." On Hanne's countenance lay a blind, fixed smile; her eyes were tightly closed.
He had them both on his arm as they returned under the trees to the station. The old woman was lively; Hanne walked on in silence and let them both talk. But suddenly she begged Pelle to be quiet a moment; he looked at her in surprise. "It's singing so beautifully in my ears; but when you talk then it stops!" "Nonsense!
"What are you doing, child?" "I am only making myself a little bit smart, mother dear!" "Yes, yes dance, my baby. You've still got the best of your youth before you, poor child! Why didn't you get a husband where you got the child from?" Hanne only hummed a tune to herself, and proceeded to don the bright blue summer costume.
"She's always bawling away," said Hanne; "those who've got real children haven't got strength left to sing. But her brat doesn't need any food; and that makes a lot of difference when one is poor." "To-day she was washing and ironing the child's things to make her fine for to-morrow, when her father comes. He is a lieutenant," said Hanne. "Is he coming to-morrow, then?" asked Pelle naively.
And he's fit to cry inside of him because he mustn't lay his head there. I, too, have known what it is to give joy, in my young days." Hanne blushed from her bosom upward. She threw a kerchief over her bosom and ran into the kitchen. The mother looked after her. "She's got a skin as tender as that of a king's daughter. Wouldn't one think she was a cuckoo's child? Her father couldn't stand her.
"You really needn't have spoiled this lovely day for us with your nonsense. I was enjoying it all so." Hanne laughed helplessly. "Mother will have it that I'm not quite right in my mind, because father hit me on the head once when I was a little girl," she told Pelle. "Yes, it's since then she's had these ideas. She'll do nothing but go rambling on at random with her ideas and her wishes.
A young man rushes forward and encircles her with his arm. A dance with Hanne! A dance with Hanne! Hanne dances with a peculiar hesitation, as though her joy had brought her from far away. Heavily, softly, she weighs on the arms of her partners, and the warmth rises from her bare bosom and dispels the cold of the terrible winter. It is as though she were on fire!
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