“Well, but you’ve told me yourself that she was paralyzed in her legs!”
“Well, what if she was?”
“Why, then she couldn’t crawl up into heaven.”
“Oh, you booby! It’s her spirit, of course!”
“Then the mouse’s spirit can very well be up there too.”
“No, it can’t, for mice haven’t got any spirit.”
“Haven’t they? Then how is it they can breathe?”[[1]]
[1] In Danish, spirit = aand, and to breathe = aande.
That was one for Rud! And the tiresome part of it was that he attended Sunday-school. His fists would have come in handy again now, but his instinct told him that sooner or later Pelle would get the better of him in fighting. And anyhow his grandmother was saved.
“Yes,” he said, yielding; “and it certainly could breathe. Well, then, it was its spirit flying up that overturned the stone—that’s what it was!”