Pelle sat over his work and listened in secret. His appearance usually had a quieting effect on these crazy outbursts of the “Ark,” but he did not want to mix himself up with this affair. And he had never even dreamed that Hanne’s mother could be like this! She was like a fury, turning her head, quick as lightning, now to one side, now to the other, and listening to every sound, ready to break out again!
Ah, she was protecting her child now that it was too late! She was like a spitting cat.
“The youngest of all the lordlin’s,”
sang the children down in the court. That was Hanne’s song. Madam Johnsen stood there as though she would like to swoop down on their heads. Suddenly she flung her apron over her face and ran indoors, sobbing.
“Ah!” they said, and they slapped their bellies every time an odor of something cooking streamed out into the court. Every few minutes they had to run out and buy five or ten öre worth of something or other; there was no end to the things that were needed in preparation for Christmas Eve. “We’re having lovely red beetroot!” said one little child, singing, making a song of it—“We’re having lovely red beetroot, aha, aha, aha!” And they swayed their little bodies to and fro as they scoured.
“Frederik!” a sharp voice cried from one of the corridors. “Run and get a score of firewood and a white roll—a ten-öre one. But look out the grocer counts the score properly and don’t pick out the crumb!”
Madam Olsen with the warm wall was frying pork. She couldn’t pull her range out onto the gallery, but she did let the pork burn so that the whole courtyard was filled with bluish smoke. “Madam Olsen! Your pork is burning!” cried a dozen women at once.
“That’s because the frying-pan’s too small!” replied Frau Olsen, thrusting her red head out through the balusters. “What’s a poor devil to do when her frying-pan’s too small?” And Madam Olsen’s frying-pan was the biggest in the whole “Ark”!
Shortly before the twilight fell Pelle came home from the workshop. He saw the streets and the people with strange eyes that diffused a radiance over all things; it was the Christmas spirit in his heart. But why? he asked himself involuntarily. Nothing in particular was in store for him. To-day he would have to work longer than usual, and he would not be able to spend the evening with Ellen, for she had to be busy in her kitchen, making things jolly for others. Why, then, did this feeling possess him? It was not a memory; so far as he could look back he had never taken part in a genuine cheerful Christmas Eve, but had been forced to content himself with the current reports of such festivities. And all the other poor folks whom he met were in the same mood as he himself. The hard questioning look had gone from their faces; they were smiling to themselves as they went. To-day there was nothing of that wan, heavy depression which commonly broods over the lower classes like the foreboding of disaster; they could not have looked more cheerful had all their hopes been fulfilled! A woman with a feather-bed in her arms passed him and disappeared into the pawn-shop; and she looked extremely well pleased. Were they really so cheerful just because they were going to have a bit of a feast, while to do so they were making a succession of lean days yet leaner? No, they were going to keep festival because the Christmas spirit prevailed in their hearts, because they must keep holiday, however dearly it might cost them!
It was on this night to be sure that Christ was born. Were the people so kind and cheerful on that account?