“It is stupid though!” exclaimed Lasse Frederik suddenly. “Why doesn’t wool grow on one’s legs? Then you’d have none of the bother of shearing the wool off sheep, carding it, spinning it, and knitting stockings.”
“Oh, what nonsense you’re talking!” said Ellen, laughing.
“Well, men were hairy once,” Lasse Frederik continued. “It was a great pity that they didn’t go on being it!”
Pelle did not think it such a pity, for it meant that they had taken over the care of themselves. Animals were born fully equipped. Even water-haters like cats and hens were born with the power of swimming; but men had to acquire whatever they had a use for. Nature did not equip them, because they had become responsible for themselves; they were the lords of creation.
“But then the poor ought to be hairy all over their bodies,” Ellen objected. “Why doesn’t Nature take as much care of the poor as of the animals? They can’t do it themselves.”
“Yes, but that’s just what they can do!” said Pelle, “for it’s they who produce most things. Perhaps you think it’s money that cultivates the land, or weaves materials, or drags coal out of the earth? It had to leave that alone; all the capital in the world can’t so much as pick up a pin from the ground if there are no hands that it can pay to do it. If the poor were born hairy, it would simply stamp him as an inferior being. Isn’t it a wonder that Nature obstinately lets the poor men’s children be born just as naked as the king’s, in spite of all that we’ve gone through of want and hardship? If you exchange the prince’s and the beggar’s new-born babies, no one can say which is which. It’s as if Providence was never tired of holding our stamp of nobility up before us.”
“Do you really think then that the world can be transformed?” said Ellen, looking affectionately at him. It seemed so wonderful that this Pelle, whom she could take in her arms, occupied himself with such great matters. And Pelle looked back at her affectionately and wonderingly. She was the same to-day as on the day he first got to know her, perhaps as the day the world was created! She put nothing out on usury, but had been born with all she had. The world could indeed be transformed, but she would always remain as she was.
The post brought a letter from Morten. He was staying at present in Sicily, and thought of travelling along the north coast of Africa to the south of Spain. “And I may make an excursion in to the borders of the Desert, and try what riding on a camel is like,” he wrote. He was well and in good spirits. It was strange to think that he was writing with open doors, while here they were struggling with the cold. He drank wine at every meal just as you drank pale ale here at home; and he wrote that the olive and orange harvests were just over.
“It must be lovely to be in such a place just for once!” said Ellen, with a sigh.
“When the new conditions gain a footing, it’ll no longer be among unattainable things for the working-man,” Pelle answered.