He lay down to please her, and stared up at the ceiling while he listened to the child’s short, rattling respiration. He could hear that she was not asleep. She lay and played with the rattling sound, making the cellar-man speak sometimes with a deep voice, sometimes with a high one. She seemed quite familiar with this dangerous chatter, which had already cost her many hours of illness and sounded so painful to Pelle’s ear. She bore her illness with the wonderful resignation that belonged to the dwellers in the back streets. She did not become unreasonable or exacting, but generally lay and entertained herself. It was as though she felt grateful for her bed; she was always in the best spirits when she was in it. The sun out here had made her very brown, but there must be something in her that it had not prevailed against. It was not so easy to move away from the bad air of the back streets.
Whenever she had a fit of coughing, Pelle raised her into a sitting posture and helped her to get rid of the phlegm. She was purple in the face with coughing, and looked at him with eyes that were almost starting out of her head with the violent exertion. Then Ellen brought her the hot milk and Ems salts, and she drank it with a resigned expression and lay down again.
“It’s never been so bad before,” whispered Ellen, “so what can be the use? Perhaps the country air isn’t good for her.”
“It ought to be though,” said Pelle, “or else she’s a poor little poisoned thing.”
Ellen’s voice rang with the possibility of their moving back again to the town for the sake of the child. To her the town air was not bad, but simply milder than out here. Through several generations she had become accustomed to it and had overcome its injurious effects; to her it seemed good as only the air of home can be. She could live anywhere, but nothing must be said against her childhood’s home. Then she became eager.
The child had wakened with their whispering, and lay and looked at them. “I shan’t die, shall I?” she asked.
They bent over her. “Now you must cover yourself up and not think about such things,” said Ellen anxiously.
But the child continued obstinately. “If I die, will you be as sorry about me as you were about Johanna?” she asked anxiously, with her eyes fixed upon them.
Pelle nodded. It was impossible for him to speak.
“Will you paint the ceiling black to show you’re sorry about me? Will you, father?” she continued inexorably, looking at him.