They got into the cart. "We shan't forget you, either of us," said Lars Peter huskily, while trying to get the old nag off.
Then the old woman stumbled in, they saw her feeling her way over the doorstep with her foot and closing the door behind her.
"'Tis lonely to be old and blind," said Lars Peter, lashing his whip as usual.
Ditte heard nothing; she was sitting with her face in one big smile. She was driving towards something new; she had no thought for Granny just then.
[CHAPTER XIV]
At Home With Mother
The rag and bone man's property—the Crow's Nest—stood a little way back from the road, and the piece up towards the road he had planted with willows, partly to hide the half-ruined abode, and partly to have material for making baskets during the winter, when there was little business to be done. The willows grew quickly, and already made a beautiful place for playing hide and seek. He made the house look as well as it could, with tar and whitewash, but miserable looking it ever would be, leaking and falling to pieces; it was the dream of Sörine's life, that they should build a new dwelling-house up by the road, using this as outhouse. The surroundings were desolate and barren, and a long way from neighbors. The view towards the northwest was shut off by a big forest, and on the opposite side was the big lake, which reflected all kinds of weather. On the dark nights could be heard the quacking of the ducks in the rushes on its banks, and on rainy days, boats would glide like shadows over it, with a dark motionless figure in the bow, the eel-fisher. He held his eel-fork slantingly in front of him, prodded the water sleepily now and then, and slid past. It was like a dream picture, and the whole lake was in keeping. When Ditte felt dull she would pretend that she ran down to the banks, hid herself in the rushes, and dream herself home to Granny. Or perhaps away to something still better; something unknown, which was in store for her somewhere or other. Ditte never doubted but that there was something special in reserve for her, so glorious that it was impossible even to imagine it.
In her play too, her thoughts would go seawards, and when her longing for Granny was too strong, she would run round the corner of the house and gaze over the wide expanse of water. Now she knew Granny's true worth.
She had not yet been down to the sea; as a matter of fact there was no time to play. At six o'clock in the morning, the youngest babe made himself heard, as regularly as clockwork, and she had to get up in a hurry, take him from his mother and dress him. Lars Peter would be at his morning jobs, if he had not already gone to the beach for fish. When he was at home, Sörine would get up with the children; but otherwise she would take a longer nap, letting Ditte do the heaviest part of the work for the day. Then her morning duties would be left undone, the two animals bellowed from the barn, the pigs squealed over their empty trough, and the hens flocked together at the hen-house door waiting to be let out. Ditte soon found out that her mother was more industrious when the father was at home than when he was out; then she would trail about the whole morning, her hair undone and an old skirt over her nightdress, and a pair of down-trodden shoes on her bare feet, while everything was allowed to slide.