The sun held out well that year. Remnants of summer continued to hang in the air right into December. Every time they had bad weather Ellen said, “Now it’ll be winter, I’m sure!” But the sun put it aside once more; it went far down in the south and looked straight into the whole sitting-room, as if it were going to count the pictures.

The large yellow Gloire de Dijon went on flowering, and every day Ellen brought in a large, heavy bunch of roses and red leaves. She was heavy herself, and the fresh cold nipped her nose—which was growing sharper—and reddened her cheeks. One day she brought a large bunch to Pelle, and asked him: “How much money am I going to get to keep Christmas with?”

It was true! The year was almost ended!

After the new year winter began in earnest. It began with much snow and frost, and made it a difficult matter to keep in communication with the outside world, while indoors people drew all the closer to one another. Anna should really have been going to school now, but she suffered a good deal from the cold and was altogether not very strong, so Pelle and Ellen dared not expose her to the long wading through the snow, and taught her themselves.

Ellen had become a little lazy about walking, and seldom went into town; the two men made the purchases for her in the evening on their way home. It was a dull time, and no work was done by artificial light, so they were home early. Ellen had changed the dinner-hour to five, so that they could all have it together. After dinner Brun generally went upstairs to work for another couple of hours. He was busy working out projects for the building on the Hill Farm land, and gave himself no rest. Pelle’s wealth of ideas and energy infected him, and his plans grew and assumed ever-increasing dimensions. He gave no consideration to his weak frame, but rose early and worked all day at the affairs of the coÖperative works. He seemed to be vying with Pelle’s youth, and to be in constant fear that something would come up behind him and interrupt his work.

The other members of the family gathered round the lamp, each with some occupation. Boy Comfort had his toy-table put up and was hammering indefatigably with his little wooden mallet upon a piece of stuff that Ellen had put between to prevent his marking the table. He was a sturdy little fellow, and the fat lay in creases round his wrists. The wrinkles on his forehead gave him a funny look when one did not recall the fact that he had cost his mother her life. He looked as if he knew it himself, he was so serious. He had leave to sit up for a little while with the others, but he went to bed at six.

Lasse Frederik generally drew when he was finished with his lessons. He had a turn for it, and Pelle, wondering, saw his own gift, out of which nothing had ever come but the prison, repeated in the boy in an improved form. He showed him the way to proceed, and held the pencil once more in his own hand. His chief occupation, however, was teaching little Anna, and telling her anything that might occur to him. She was especially fond of hearing about animals, and Pelle had plenty of reminiscences of his herding-time from which to draw.

“Have animals really intelligence?” asked Ellen, in surprise. “You really believe that they think about things just as we do?”

It was nothing new to Sister; she talked every day to the fowls and rabbits, and knew how wise they were.

“I wonder if flowers can think too,” said Lasse Frederik. He was busy drawing a flower from memory, and it would look like a face: hence the remark.

Pelle thought they could.

“No, no, Pelle!” said Ellen. “You’re going too far now! It’s only us people who can think.”

“They can feel at any rate, and that’s thinking in a way, I suppose, only with the heart. They notice at once if you’re fond of them; if you aren’t they don’t thrive.”

“Yes, I do believe that, for if you’re fond of them you take good care of them,” said the incorrigible Ellen.

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Pelle, looking at her teasingly. “You’re very fond of your balsam, but a gardener would be sure to tell you that you treat it like a cabbage. And look how industriously it flowers all the same. They answer kind thoughts with gratitude, and that’s a nice way of thinking. Intelligence isn’t perhaps worth as much as we human beings imagine it to be. You yourself think with your heart, little mother.” It was his pet name for her just now.

After a little interlude such as this, they went on with their work. Pelle had to tell Sister all about the animals in her alphabet-book—about the useful cow and the hare that licked the dew off the clover and leaped up under the very nose of the cowherd. In the winter it went into the garden, gnawed the bark off the young trees and ate the farmer’s wife’s cabbage. “Yes, I must acknowledge that,” Ellen interposed, and then they all laughed, for puss had just eaten her kail.

Then the child suddenly left the subject, and wanted to know whether there had always, always been a Copenhagen. Pelle came to a standstill for a moment, but by a happy inspiration dug Bishop Absalom out of his memory. He took the opportunity of telling them that the capital had a population of half a million.

“Have you counted them, father?” exclaimed Sister, in perplexity, taking hold of his sleeve.

“Why, of course father hasn’t, you little donkey!” said Lasse Frederik. “One might be born while he was counting!”

Then they were at the cock again, which both began and ended the book. He stood and crowed so proudly and never slept. He was a regular prig, but when Sister was diligent he put a one-Öre piece among the leaves. But the hens laid eggs, and it was evident that they were the same as the flowers; for when you were kind to them and treated them as if they belonged to the family, they were industrious in laying, but if you built a model house for them and treated them according to all established rules, they did not even earn as much as would pay for their food. At Uncle Kalle’s there was a hen that came into the room among all the children and laid its egg under the bed every single day all through the winter, when no other hens were laying. Then the farmer of Stone Farm bought it to make something by it. He gave twenty kroner (a guinea) for it and thought he had got a gold mine; but no sooner did it come to Stone Farm than it left off laying winter eggs, for there it was not one of the family, but was only a hen that they wanted to make money out of.

“Mother’s balsam flowers all the winter,” said Sister, looking fondly at the plant.

“Yes, that’s because it sees how industrious we all are,” said Lasse Frederik mischievously.

“Will you be quiet!” said Pelle, hitting out at him.

Ellen sat knitting some tiny socks. Her glance moved lingeringly from one to another of them, and she smiled indulgently at their chatter. They were just a lot of children!

“Mother, may I have those for my doll?” asked Anna, taking up the finished sock.

“No, little sister’s to have them when she comes.”

“If it is a girl,” put in Lasse Frederik.

“When’s little sister coming?”

“In the spring when the stork comes back to the farm; he’ll bring her with him.”

“Pooh! The stork!” said Lasse Frederik contemptuously. “What a pack of nonsense!”

Sister too was wiser than that. When the weather was fine she fetched milk from the farm, and had learned a few things there.

“Now you must go to bed, my child,” said Ellen, rising. “I can see you’re tired.” When she had helped the child into bed she came back and sat down again with her knitting.

“Now I think you should leave off work for to-day,” said Pelle.

“Then I shouldn’t be ready in time,” answered Ellen, moving her knitting-needles more swiftly.

“Send it to a machine-knitter. You don’t even earn your bread anyhow with that handicraft; and there must be a time for work and a time for rest, or else you’d not be a human being.”

“Mother can make three ore (nearly a halfpenny) an hour by knitting,” said Lasse Frederik, who had made a careful calculation.

What did it matter? Ellen did not think she neglected anything else in doing it.

“It is stupid though!” exclaimed Lasse Frederik suddenly. “Why doesn’t wool grow on one’s legs? Then you’d have none of the bother of shearing the wool off sheep, carding it, spinning it, and knitting stockings.”

“Oh, what nonsense you’re talking!” said Ellen, laughing.

“Well, men were hairy once,” Lasse Frederik continued. “It was a great pity that they didn’t go on being it!”

Pelle did not think it such a pity, for it meant that they had taken over the care of themselves. Animals were born fully equipped. Even water-haters like cats and hens were born with the power of swimming; but men had to acquire whatever they had a use for. Nature did not equip them, because they had become responsible for themselves; they were the lords of creation.

“But then the poor ought to be hairy all over their bodies,” Ellen objected. “Why doesn’t Nature take as much care of the poor as of the animals? They can’t do it themselves.”

“Yes, but that’s just what they can do!” said Pelle, “for it’s they who produce most things. Perhaps you think it’s money that cultivates the land, or weaves materials, or drags coal out of the earth? It had to leave that alone; all the capital in the world can’t so much as pick up a pin from the ground if there are no hands that it can pay to do it. If the poor were born hairy, it would simply stamp him as an inferior being. Isn’t it a wonder that Nature obstinately lets the poor men’s children be born just as naked as the king’s, in spite of all that we’ve gone through of want and hardship? If you exchange the prince’s and the beggar’s new-born babies, no one can say which is which. It’s as if Providence was never tired of holding our stamp of nobility up before us.”

“Do you really think then that the world can be transformed?” said Ellen, looking affectionately at him. It seemed so wonderful that this Pelle, whom she could take in her arms, occupied himself with such great matters. And Pelle looked back at her affectionately and wonderingly. She was the same to-day as on the day he first got to know her, perhaps as the day the world was created! She put nothing out on usury, but had been born with all she had. The world could indeed be transformed, but she would always remain as she was.

The post brought a letter from Morten. He was staying at present in Sicily, and thought of travelling along the north coast of Africa to the south of Spain. “And I may make an excursion in to the borders of the Desert, and try what riding on a camel is like,” he wrote. He was well and in good spirits. It was strange to think that he was writing with open doors, while here they were struggling with the cold. He drank wine at every meal just as you drank pale ale here at home; and he wrote that the olive and orange harvests were just over.

“It must be lovely to be in such a place just for once!” said Ellen, with a sigh.

“When the new conditions gain a footing, it’ll no longer be among unattainable things for the working-man,” Pelle answered.

Brun now came down, having at last finished his work. “Ah, it’s good to be at home!” he said, shaking himself; “it’s a stormy night.”

“Here’s a letter from Morten,” said Pelle, handing it to him.

The old man put on his spectacles.