But one day she came home and threw some money on the table. “Now I needn’t go to Doctor’s any more.”
“What’s the matter? Have you done something wrong?” asked the mother, horrified.
“The doctor gave me a box on the ear because I couldn’t carry Anna over the gutter—she’s so heavy.”
“But you can’t be sent away because he has struck you! You’ve certainly had a quarrel—you are so stubborn!”
“No; but I accidentally upset the perambulator with little Erik in it—so that he fell out. His head is like a mottled apple.” Her expression was unchanged.
The mother burst into tears. “But how could you do such a thing?” Karen stood there and looked at the other defiantly. Suddenly her mother seized hold of her. “You didn’t do it on purpose? Did you do it on purpose?”
Karen turned away with a shrug of the shoulders and went up to the garret without saying good night. Her mother wanted to follow her.
“Let her go!” said the old woman, as though from a great distance. “You have no power over her! She was begotten in wrath.”
XV
All the winter Jens had smeared his upper lip with fowl’s dung in order to grow a moustache; now it was sprouting, and he found himself a young woman; she was nurse-maid at the Consul’s. “It’s tremendous fun,” he said; “you ought to get one yourself. When she kisses me she sticks out her tongue like a little kid.” But Pelle wanted no young woman—in the first place, no young woman would have him, branded as he was; and then he was greatly worried.