Two days later Pelle and the librarian went to Frederiksberg Street to look at a business that was to be disposed of. It was a small matter of half a score of workmen, with an electrical workshop in the basement and a shop above. The whole could be had by taking over the stock and machinery at a valuation. The rent was rather high, but with that exception the conditions were favorable.

“I think we’ll arrange that the purchase and working capital shall bear interest and be sunk like a four per cent. credit-association loan,” said Brun.

“It’s cheap money,” answered Pelle. “A good result won’t say much about the circumstances when we haven’t got the same conditions as other businesses.”

“Not so very cheap. At that price you can get as many as you want on good security; and I suppose the workman ought to be regarded as the best security in an undertaking that’s built upon labor,” said the old man, smiling. “There’ll be a big fall in discount when you come into power, Pelle! But the bare capital costs no more now either, when there are no parasites at it; and it’s just parasites that we’re going to fight.”

Pelle had no objection to the cheap money; there were still plenty of difficulties to overcome. If they got on, it would not be long before private speculation declared war on him.

They agreed that they would have nothing to do with agents and branches; the business was to rest entirely upon itself and communicate directly with the consumers. What was made in the workshop should merely cover the expenses of the shop above, the rest of the surplus being divided among the workmen.

“According to what rules?” asked Brun, with a searching glance at Pelle.

“Equal!” he answered without hesitation. “We won’t have anything to do with agreements. We made a great mistake, when we began the Movement, in giving in to the agreement system instead of doing away with it altogether. It has increased the inequality. Every one that works has a right to live.”

“Do you think the capable workman will submit to sharing equally with those that are less capable?” asked Brun doubtfully.

“He must learn to!” said Pelle firmly. “How could he otherwise maintain that all work is of equal value?”

“Is that your own opinion?”

“Most decidedly. I see no reason, for instance, for making any difference between a doctor and a sewer-cleaner. It’s impossible to say which of them is of the greater use in matters of health; the point is that each shall do what he can.”

“Capital!” exclaimed Brun. “Capital!” The old philosopher was in the best of spirits. Pelle had considered him awkward and unpractical, and was astonished to find that his views on many points were so practical.

“It’s because this is something new,” said the old man, rubbing his hands. “I’d done with the old before I came into the world; there was nothing that stimulated me; I was said to be degenerated. Yes, indeed! All the same, the old bookworm’s going to show his ancestors that there’s vigorous blood flowing in his veins too. We two have found the place from which the world can be rocked, my dear Pelle; I think we’ve found it! And now we’ll set to work.”

There was enough to do indeed, but they were realities now, and Pelle had a pleasant feeling of once more having his feet upon the ground. This was something different from riding alone through space upon his own thought, always in danger of falling down; here he opened up his road, so to speak, with his hands.

It had been arranged that the present owner of the business should carry it on a little longer, while Pelle made himself at home in it all, learned to understand the machinery, and took lessons in book-keeping. He was always busy, used his day and at night slept like a log. His brain was no longer in a perpetual ferment like a caldron, for sleep put out the fire beneath it.

The essential thing was that they should be a party that could entirely rely upon one another, and Pelle unhesitatingly discharged those of his comrades who were not suited for work under new forms, and admitted others.

The first man he applied to was Peter Dreyer. Ellen advised him not to do so. “You know he’s on bad terms with the police,” she said. “You may have difficulties enough without that.” But Pelle needed some one beside him who was able to look at things from a new point of view, and quite understood what was essential; egoists were of no good, and this must be the very thing for a man who had grown restive at the old state of things.

Pelle had come home from his book-keeping course to have his dinner. Ellen was out with Boy Comfort, but she had left the meal ready for him. It was more convenient to eat it in the kitchen, so he sat upon the kitchen table, reading a book on the keeping of accounts while he ate.

In the front room sat Lasse Frederik, learning his lessons with fingers in both ears in order to shut out the world completely. This was not so easy, however, for Sister had a loose tooth, and his fingers were itching to get at it. Every other minute he broke off his reading to offer her something or other for leave to pull it out; but the little girl always made the same answer: “No, father’s going to.”

He then gave up setting about it honorably, and tried to take her unawares; and at last he persuaded her to let him tie a piece of cotton round the tooth and fasten it to the doorhandle. “There! Now we’ve only got to burn through the cotton,” he said, lighting a piece of candle, “or else father’ll never be able to get the tooth out. It loosens it tremendously!” He talked on about all kinds of things to divert her attention, like a conjuror, and then suddenly brought the candle close to her nose, so that she quickly drew back. “Look, here’s the tooth!” he cried triumphantly, showing it to Sister, who, however, screamed at the top of her voice.

Pelle heard it all, but quietly went on eating. They would have to make it up by themselves. It was not long before Lasse Frederik was applying a plaster to his exploit; he talked to her and gave her her toys to put her into good humor again. When Pelle went in, they were both lying on the floor with their heads under the bed. They had thrown the tooth right into the wall, and were shouting together:

“Are you going to do anything now, father?” asked Sister, running up to him.

Yes, he had several things to do.

“You’re always so busy,” she said sulkily. “Are you going to keep on all your life?”

Pelle’s conscience smote him. “No, I’m not very busy,” he said quickly. “I can stay with you for a little. What shall we do?”

Little Anna brought her large rag doll, and began to drag chairs into position.

“No, that’s so stupid!” said Lasse Frederik. “Tell us about the time you minded the cows, father! About the big mad bull!” And Pelle told them stories of his childhood—about the bull and Father Lasse, the farmer of Stone Farm and Uncle Kalle with his thirteen children and his happy disposition. The big farm, the country life, the stone-quarry and the sea—they all made up a fairy-story for the two children of the pavement; the boy Pelle’s battle with the great oxen for the supremacy, his wonderful capture of the twenty-five-Öre piece—each incident was more exciting than the one before it. Most exciting of all was the story of the giant Eric, who became an idiot from a blow. “That was in those days,” said Pelle, nodding; “it wouldn’t happen like that now.”

“What a lot you have seen!” said Ellen, who had come home while they were talking, and was sitting knitting. “I can hardly understand how you managed—a little fellow like that! How I should like to have seen you!”

“Father’s big!” exclaimed Sister appreciatively. Lasse

Frederik was a little more reserved. It was so tiresome always to be outdone, and he would like to have found room for a parenthesis about his own exploits. “I say, there’s a big load of corn in the cabman’s gateway,” he said, to show that he too understood country life.

“That’s not corn,” said Pelle; “it’s hay—clover hay. Don’t you even know what corn’s like?”

“We call it corn,” answered the boy confidently, “and it is corn too, for it has those tassels at the ends.”

“The ears, you mean! But those are on coarse grass too, and, besides, corn is descended from grass. Haven’t you ever really been into the country?”

“We were once going, and meant to stay a whole week, but it went wrong with mother’s work. I’ve been right out to the Zoological Gardens, though.”

Pelle suddenly realized how much the children must lose by living their life in the city. “I wonder if we shouldn’t think about moving out of town,” he said that evening when he and Ellen were alone.

“If you think so,” Ellen answered. She herself had no desire to move into the country, indeed she had an instinctive horror of it as a place to live in. She did not understand it from the point of view of the children either; there were so many children who got on capitally in town, and he surely did not want them to become stupid peasants! If he thought so, however, she supposed it was right; he was generally right.

Then it was certainly time they gave notice; there was not much more than a month to April removing-day.

On Sundays they packed the perambulator and made excursions into the surrounding country, just as in the old days when Lasse Frederik was the only child and sat in his carriage like a little crown-prince. Now he wheeled the carriage in which Boy Comfort sat in state; and when Sister grew tired she was placed upon the apron with her legs hanging down. They went in a different direction each time, and came to places that even Lasse Frederik did not know. Close in to the back of the town lay nice old orchards, and in the midst of them a low straw-thatched building, which had evidently once been the dwelling-house on a farm. They came upon it quite by chance from a side-road, and discovered that the town was busy building barracks beyond this little idyll too, and shutting it in. When the sun shone they sat down on a bank and ate their dinner; Pelle and Lasse Frederik vied with one another in performing feats of strength on the withered grass; and Ellen hunted for winter boughs to decorate the house with.

On one of their excursions they crossed a boggy piece of ground on which grew willow copse; behind it rose cultivated land. They followed the field roads with no definite aim, and chanced upon an uninhabited, somewhat dilapidated house, which stood in the middle of the rising ground with a view over Copenhagen, and surrounded by a large, overgrown garden. On an old, rotten board stood the words “To let,” but nothing was said as to where application was to be made.

“That’s just the sort of house you’d like,” said Ellen, for Pelle had stopped.

“It would be nice to see the inside,” he said. “I expect the key’s to be got at the farm up there.”

Lasse Frederik ran up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who wore a stand-up collar and was smoking a cigar.

The house belonged to the hill farm, and had been built for the parents of the present owner. The old people had had the odd idea of calling it “Daybreak,” and the name was painted in large letters on the east gable. The house had stood empty since they died some years ago, and looked strangely lifeless; the window-panes were broken and looked like dead eyes, and the floors were covered with filth.

“No, I don’t like it!” said Ellen.

Pelle showed her, however, that the house was good enough, the doors and windows fitted well, and the whole needed only to be overhauled. There were four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, and some rooms above, one of these being a large attic facing south. The garden was more than an acre in extent, and in the yard was an out-house fitted up for fowls and rabbits, the rent was four hundred krones (£22).

Pelle and Lasse Frederik went all over it again and again, and made the most wonderful discoveries; but when Pelle heard, the price, he grew serious. “Then we may as well give it up,” he said.

Ellen did not answer, but on the way home she reckoned it out to herself; she could see how disappointed he was. “It’ll be fifteen krones (17 s.) more a month than we now pay,” she suddenly exclaimed. “But supposing we could get something out of the garden, and kept fowls! Perhaps, too, we might let the upper floor furnished.”

Pelle looked gratefully at her. “I’ll undertake to get several hundred krones’ worth out of the garden,” he said.

They were tired out when they got home, for after all it was a long way out. “It’s far away from everything,” said Ellen. “You’d have to try to buy a second-hand bicycle.” Pelle suddenly understood from the tone of her voice that she herself would be lonely out there.

“We’d better put it out of our thoughts,” he said, “and look for a three-roomed flat in town. The other is unpractical after all.”

When he returned from his work the following evening, Ellen had a surprise for him. “I’ve been out and taken the house,” she said. “It’s not so far from the tram after all, and we get it for three hundred krones (£16 10s.) the first year. The man promised to put it all into good order by removing-day. Aren’t you glad?”

“Yes, if only you’ll be happy there,” said Pelle, putting his arms round her.

The children were delighted. They were to live out there in the bright world into which they had peeped, as a rule, only on very festive occasions—to wander about there every day, and always eat the food they brought with them in the open air.

A week later they moved out. Pelle did not think they could afford to hire men to do the removing. He borrowed a four-wheeled hand-cart—the same that had carried Ellen’s furniture from Chapel Road—and in the course of Saturday evening and Sunday morning he and Lasse Frederik took out the things. “Queen Theresa” gave Ellen a helping hand with the packing. The last load was done very quickly, as they had to be out of the town before church-time. They half ran with it, Boy Comfort having been placed in a tub on the top of the load. Behind came Ellen with little Anna, and last of all fat “Queen Theresa” with some pot plants that had to be taken with special care. It was quite a procession.

They were in a tremendous bustle all day. The cleaning had been very badly done and Ellen and “Queen Theresa” had to do it all over again. Well, it was only what they might have expected! When you moved you always had to clean two flats, the one you left and the one you went into. There had not been much done in the way of repairs either, but that too was what one was accustomed to. Landlords were the same all the world over. There was little use in making a fuss; they were there, and the agreement was signed. Pelle would have to see to it by degrees.

By evening the house was so far in order that it could be slept in. “Now we’ll stop for to-day,” said Ellen. “We mustn’t forget that it’s Sunday.” They carried chairs out into the garden and had their supper there, Pelle having laid an old door upon a barrel for a table. Every time “Queen Theresa” leaned forward with her elbows on the table, the whole thing threatened to upset, and then she screamed. She was a pastor’s daughter, and her surroundings now made her melancholy. “I haven’t sat like this and had supper out of doors since I ran away from home as a fifteen-year-old girl,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Poor soul!” said Ellen, when they had gone with her along the road to the tram. “She’s certainly gone through a good deal. She’s got no one to care about her except us.”

“Is she really a pastor’s daughter?” asked Pelle. “Women of that kind always pretend to be somebody of a better class who has been unfortunate.”

“Oh, yes, it’s true enough. She ran away from home because she couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t allowed to laugh, but had to be always praying and thinking about God. Her parents have cursed her.”

They went for a little walk behind the farm to see the evening sky. Ellen was very talkative, and already had a thousand plans in her head. She was going to plant a great many fruit-bushes and make a kitchen-garden; and they would keep a number of fowls and rabbits. Next summer she would have early vegetables that could be sold in town.

Pelle was only half attending as he walked beside her and gazed at the glowing evening sky, which, with its long fiery lines, resembled a distant prairie-fire. There was quiet happiness within him and around him. He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life. Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.

“You’re so silent!” said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him upon the dike.

“I feel as if you had just become my bride,” he said, taking her into his arms.