Merle sighed. “We must hope it won’t happen to us again,” she said.
“I won’t have it happen to us now,” he said, pacing up and down. “There’s that poor devil of a joiner down at Moen, with consumption. I’m going down there with a bit of a parcel to chuck in at his door, if I have to take your shift and the shirt off my back. You know yourself it won’t be any Christmas at all, if we don’t do something.”
“Well—if you like. I’ll see if we can’t find something among the children’s clothes that they can do without.”
The end of it was that Merle levied toll on all the parcels from home, both rice and raisins and cakes, and made up little packets of them to send round by him. That was Merle’s way; let her alone and she would hit upon something.
The snow creaked and crackled underfoot as Peer went off on his errand. A starry sky and a biting wind, and light upon light from the windows of the farms scattered over the dark hillsides. High above all, against the sky, there was one little gleam that might be a cottage window, or might be a star.
Peer was flushed and freshened up when he came back into the warmth of the room. And a chorus of joyful shouts was raised when Merle announced to the children: “Father’s going to bath you all to-night.”
The sawed-off end of a barrel was the bathing-tub, and Peer stood in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, holding the naked little bodies as they sprawled about in the steaming water.
Mother was busy with something or other in the sitting-room. But it was a great secret, and the children were very mysterious about it. “No, no, you mustn’t go in,” they said to little Asta, who went whimpering for her mother to the door.
And later in the evening, when the Christmas-tree was lit up, and the windows shone white with frost, there were great doings all about the sitting room floor. Louise got her ski on and immediately fell on her face; Lorentz, astride of the new sleigh, was shouting “Hi, hi!—clear the course there!”, and over in a corner sat little Asta, busy putting her baby to bed and singing it to sleep.
Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled.