No-one could get the better of her; she was bored, and just invented any nonsense that came into her head. Maren gave it up and returned to her work quietly and in deep thought.
She stood crying over her herrings, with the salt tears dropping down into the pickle. She often cried of late, over herself and over the world in general; the people treated her as if she were infected with the plague, poisoning the air round her with their meanness and hate, while as far as she knew she had always helped them to the best of her ability. They did not hesitate in asking her advice when in trouble, though at the same time they would blame _her_ for having brought it upon them--calling her every name they could think of when she had gone. Even the child's _innocent_ lips called her a witch.
Since Sören's death sorrow and tears had reddened Maren's eyes with inflammation and turned her eyelids, but her neighbors only took it as another sign of her hardened witchcraft. Her sight was failing too, and she often had to depend upon Ditte's young eyes; and then it would happen that the child took advantage of the opportunity and played pranks.
Ditte was not bad--she was neither bad nor good. She was simply a little creature, whose temperament required change. And so little happened in her world, that she seized on whatever offered to prevent herself from being bored to death.
One day something did happen! From one of the big farms, lying at the other side of the common, with woods bounding the sandhills, Maren had received permission to gather sticks in the wood every Tuesday. There was not much heat in them, but they were good enough for making a cup of coffee.
These Tuesdays were made into picnics. They took their meals with them, which they enjoyed in some pleasant spot, preferably by the edge of the lake, and Ditte would sit on the wheelbarrow on both journeys. When they had got their load, they would pick berries or--in the autumn--crab-apples and sloes, which were afterwards cooked in the oven.
Now Granny was ill, having cried so much that she could no longer see--which Ditte quite understood--but the extraordinary part of it was that the water seemed to have gone to her legs, so that she could not stand on them. The little one had to trudge all alone to the forest for the sticks. It was a long way, but to make up for it, the forest was full of interest. Now she could go right in, where otherwise she was not allowed to go, because Granny was afraid of getting lost, and always kept to the outskirts. There were singing birds in there, their twittering sounded wonderful under the green trees, the air was like green water with rays of light in it, and it hummed and seethed in the darkness under the bushes.