“Hey, Pelle!” they cried, and they clapped their mittens; “come over here! You can help us to build a snow-house. We’ll wall up the door and light some Christmas-tree candles: we’ve got some ends. Oh, do come!”
“Then Morten must come too—he’ll be here directly!”
Manna turned up her nose. “No, we don’t want Morten here!”
“Why not? He’s so jolly!” said Pelle, wounded.
“Yes, but his father is so dreadful—everybody is afraid of him. And then he’s been in prison.”
“Yes, for beating some one—that’s nothing so dreadful! My father was too, when he was a young man. That’s no disgrace, for it isn’t for stealing.”
But Manna looked at him with an expression exactly like Jeppe’s when he was criticizing somebody from his standpoint as a respectable citizen.
“But, Pelle, aren’t you ashamed of it? That’s how only the very poorest people think—those who haven’t any feelings of shame!”
Pelle blushed for his vulgar way of looking at things. “It’s no fault of Morten’s that his father’s like that!” he retorted lamely.
“No, we won’t have Morten here. And mother won’t let us. She says perhaps we can play with you, but not with anybody else. We belong to a very good family,” she said, in explanation.