Pelle nodded.
“You mustn’t do it!” she cried, suddenly seizing him by the arms. “Do you hear, Pelle? You mustn’t do it!” She was greatly disturbed and gazed beseechingly at him. “I don’t understand you at all.”
He looked at her in bewilderment and murmured something in self-defence.
“Don’t you see that he only wants to make use of you?” she continued excitedly. “It’s a Judas post he’s offered you, but we won’t earn our bread by turning poor people into the street. I’ve seen my own bits of furniture lying in the gutter. Oh, if you’d gone there!” She gazed shudderingly straight before her.
“I can’t understand what you can have been thinking about—you who are generally so sensible,” she said when she had once more calmed down, looking reproachfully at him; but the next instant she understood it all, and sank down weeping.
“Oh, Pelle, Pelle!” she exclaimed, and hid her face.
VIII
Pelle read no more and no longer went to the library. He had enough to do to keep things going. There was no question now of trying to get a place; winter was at the door, and the army of the unemployed grew larger every day. He stayed at home, worked when there was anything to do, and for the rest minded the children for Ellen while she washed. He talked to Lasse Frederik as he would to a comrade, but it was nice to have to look after the little ones too. They were grateful for it, and he discovered that it gave him much pleasure. Boy Comfort he was very fond of now, his only sorrow being that the boy could not talk yet. His dumbness was always a silent accusation.
“Why don’t you bring books home?” Ellen would say when she came up from the wash-house to look after them, with her arms bare and tiny drops in her hair from the steam down there. “You’ve plenty of time now.”
No, what did he want with books? They did perhaps widen his horizon a little, but what lay behind it became so very much greater again; and he himself only grew smaller by reading. It was impossible in any case to obtain any reassuring view of the whole. The world followed its own crooked course in defiance of all wisdom. There was little pleasure in absorbing knowledge about things that one could not remedy; poor people had better be dull.