Ditte: Girl Alive!

by Martin Andersen Nexø

"She takes after the bad side of the family," said Sören, when he saw how tightly she kept her window closed.

"She takes after the fine side," said the mother then. "Just you wait and see, she will marry a gentleman's son."

"Fool," growled Sören angrily and went his way: "to fill both her own and the girl's head with such rubbish!"

He was fond enough of Maren, but her intellect had never won his respect. As the children grew up and did wrong in one way or another, Sören always said: "What a fool the child is—it takes after its mother." And Maren, as years went on, bore patiently with this; she knew quite as well as Sören that it was not intellect that counted.

Two or three times in the week, Sörine went up town with a load of fish and brought goods home again. It was a long way to walk, and part of the road went through a pine wood where it was dark in the evening and tramps hung about.

"Oh, trash," said Sören, "the girl may just as well try a little of everything, it will make a woman of her."

But Maren wished to shelter her child, as long as she could. And so she arranged it in this way, that her daughter could drive home in the cart from Sands farm which was then carrying grain for the brewery.

The arrangement was good, inasmuch as Sörine need no longer go in fear of tramps, and all that a timid young girl might encounter; but, on the other hand, it did not answer Maren's expectations. Far from having taken any harm from the long walks, it was now proved what good they had done her. She became even more delicate than before, and dainty about her food.

This agreed well with the girl's otherwise gentle manners. In spite of the trouble it gave her, this new phase was a comfort to Maren. It took the last remaining doubt from her heart: it was now irrevocably settled. Sörine was a gentlefolks' child, not by birth, of course—for Maren knew well enough who was father and who mother to the girl, whatever Sören might have thought—but by gift of grace. It did happen that such were found in a poor man's cradle, and they were always supposed to bring joy to their parents. Herrings and potatoes, flounders and potatoes and a little bacon in between—this was no fare for what one might call a young lady. Maren made little delicacies for her, and when Sören saw it, he spat as if he had something nasty in his mouth and went his way.

But, after all one can be too fastidious, and when at last the girl could not keep down even an omelet, it was too much of a good thing for Maren. She took her daughter up to a wise woman who lived on the common. Three times did she try her skill on Sörine, with no avail. So Sören had to borrow a horse and cart and drove them in to the homeopathist. He did it very unwillingly. Not because he did not care for the girl, and it might be possible, as Maren said, that as she slept, an animal or evil spirit might have found its way into her mouth and now prevented the food from going down. Such things had been heard of before. But actually to make fools of themselves on this account—rushing off with horse and cart to the doctor just as the gentry did, and make themselves, too, the laughing stock of the whole hamlet, when a draught of tansy would have the same effect—this was what Sören could not put up with.