It began to dawn upon him who she was. “What became of you two that day on the common? We were going to have dinner together,” he said.
“When you were taken up? Oh, we couldn’t find you, so we just went home.” Her face was now quite uncovered, and she lay looking at him with her large gray eyes. It was Hanne’s look; behind it was the same wondering over life, but here was added to it a terrible knowledge. Suddenly her face changed; she discovered that she had been outwitted, and glared at him.
“Is it true that you and mother were once sweethearts?” she suddenly asked mischievously.
Pelle’s face flushed. The question had taken him by surprise. “I’ll tell you everything about your mother if you’ll tell me what you know,” he said, looking straight at her.
“What is it you want to know?” she asked in a cross-questioning tone. “Are you going to write about me in the papers?”
“My dear child, we must find your grandmother! She may be starving.”
“I think she’s at the ‘Generality,’” said the child quietly. “I went there on Thursday when the old things had leave to go out and beg for a little coffee; and one day I saw her.”
“Didn’t you go up to her then?”
“No; I was tired of listening to her lamentations!”
Johanna was no longer stiff and defiant. She lay with her face turned away and answered—a little sullenly—Pelle’s questions, while she played nervously with his fingers. Her brief answers made up for him one connected, sad story.