The mechanic shook Elsie; she remained on the floor.
“I thought so,” he muttered with a coarse oath. “What business had we with her?”
He stood a moment at a loss what to do; Svend and the tinker came in too. Suddenly the mechanic seized a flask on the shelf where he knew the liquors were, snapped the neck off with a dexterous blow, and poured a few drops into Elsie’s mouth.
She awakened, disturbed, surprised; then she seized the bottle and drank again.
“There, now—take a heart-strengthener. You shall have two hams under your shawl for Puppelena;” with which the mechanic went to work, loading Svend and the tinker.
What was it she was drinking? She had never tasted anything like it before. It was sweet and strong like the other liquor; but it was roses—it was roses she was drinking; roses which had followed her through youth, but which had until now been so far away. They had now come back to her once again—she drank them in long, fragrant draughts.
Like warm clothes it laid itself about her frozen limbs; all at once she became strong, her hunger was appeased, and stood up erect while a delightful, warm current streamed through her. A boundless joy welled up in her; she did not realize where she was; she thought of nothing; but there was not the faintest cloud upon the bliss she felt.
Whenever she drank it seemed as if she was sinking deeper and deeper into warm, fragrant rose-leaves, until they came together overhead, and swung her to and fro under lofty arches where roses sang and the music was fragrant with long, roseate tones which understood her misery and came to comfort her.
But the cellar door was opened from without and Olkonomen hove in sight pale and breathless. The shop boy must have noticed something, for a message had gone for the police, and two officers were already at Madame Ellingsen’s corner.
The mechanic was gone in a trice as if he had sunk in the earth. The tinker, too, ran off with what he had; Olkonomen went next, and there at the corner by the bank the long legs of Jorgen Tambur running away, were visible.