“Poor little girl!” said Pelle, stroking her hair.
“Why do you say that?” she asked him, looking at him in astonishment.
He enjoyed her absolute confidence, and was told things that the boys were not allowed to know. She began to dress more carefully, and her fine fair hair was always brushed smoothly back from her forehead. She was delighted when they both had some errand in the city. Then she put on her best and went through the streets at his side, her whole face smiling. “Now perhaps people will think we are a couple of lovers—but what does it matter? Let them think it!” Pelle laughed; with her thirteen years she was no bigger than a child of nine, so backward in growth was she.
She often found it difficult to make both ends meet; she would say little or nothing about it, but a kind of fear would betray itself in her expression. Then Pelle would speak cheerfully of the good times that would soon be coming for all poor people. It cost him a great deal of exertion to put this in words so as to make it sound as it ought to sound. His thoughts were still so new—even to himself. But the children thought nothing of his unwieldy speech; to them it was easier to believe in the new age than it was to him.
Pelle was going through a peculiar change at this time. He had seen enough need and poverty in his life; and the capital was simply a battlefield on which army upon army had rushed forward and had miserably been defeated. Round about him lay the fallen. The town was built over them as over a cemetery; one had to tread upon them in order to win forward and harden one’s heart. Such was life in these days; one shut one’s eyes—like the sheep when they see their comrades about to be slaughtered—and waited until one’s own turn came. There was nothing else to do.
But now he was awake and suffering; it hurt him with a stabbing pain whenever he saw others suffer; and he railed against misfortune, unreasonable though it might be.
There came a day when he sat working at home. At the other end of the gangway a factory girl with her child had moved in a short while before. Every morning she locked the door and went to work—and she did not return until the evening. When Pelle came home he could hear the sound of crying within the room.