The shutters were up in all the basement windows, excepting that of the bread-woman. Before the door of her shop stood a crowd of grimy little children, smearing themselves with dainties; every moment one of them slipped down into the cellar to spend an öre. One little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, with a tightly braided head, was balancing herself on the edge of the curbstone with a big jug of cream in her hand; and in a doorway opposite stood a few young fellows meditating some mischief or other.
“Shall we go anywhere to-day?” asked Ellen, when Pelle and young Lasse got home. “The fine season is soon over.”
“I must go to the committee-meeting,” Pelle replied hesitatingly. He was sorry for her; she was going to have another child, and she looked so forsaken as she moved about the home. But it was impossible for him to stay at home.
“When do you think you’ll be back?”
“That I don’t know, Ellen. It is very possible it will take the whole day.”
Then she was silent and set out his food.
XXIII
That year was, if possible, worse than the preceding. As early as September the unemployed stood in long ranks beside the canals or in the market-place, their feet in the wet. The bones of their wrists were blue and prominent and foretold a hard winter, of which the corns of the old people had long ago given warning; and sparks of fire were flying up from under poor folks’ kettles. “Now the hard winter is coming and bringing poverty with it,” said the people. “And then we shall have a pretty time!”
In October the frost appeared and began to put an end to all work that had not already been stopped by the hard times.
In the city the poor were living from hand to mouth; if a man had a bad day it was visible on his plate the next morning. Famine lay curled up beneath the table in ten thousand households; like a bear in its winter sleep it had lain there all summer, shockingly wasted and groaning in its evil dreams; but they were used to its society and took no notice of it so long as it did not lay its heavy paw upon the table. One day’s sickness, one day’s loss of work—and there it was!