“They’d planned some demonstration or other, and would in that case have met with harsh treatment, I suppose,” said Pelle gravely.
“It was well you got them to change their minds. I’ve seen these demonstrations in the South, where the police and the soldiers ride over the miserable unemployed. It’s a sad sight.”
They walked up across the fields toward “Daybreak.” “To think that you’re home again!” said Pelle, with childlike delight. “You never wrote a word about coming.”
“Well, I’d meant to stay away another couple of months. But one day I saw the birds of passage flying northward across the Mediterranean, and I began to be so homesick. It was just as well I came too, for now I can see Brun before he goes.”
“Oh, is he going away, after all? That’s been settled very quickly. This morning he couldn’t make up his mind.”
“It’s this about Peter. The old man’s fallen off very much in the last six months. But let’s walk quicker! I’m longing to see Ellen and the children. How’s the baby?”
“He’s a little fatty!” said Pelle proudly. “Nine pounds without his clothes! Isn’t that splendid? He’s a regular sunshine baby.”
XXIII
It is spring once more in Denmark.
It has been coming for a long time. The lark came before the frost was out of the ground, and then the starling appeared. And one day the air seemed suddenly to have become high and light so that the eye could once more see far out; there was a peculiar broad airiness in the wind—the breath of spring. It rushed along with messages of young, manly strength, and people threw back their shoulders and took deep breaths. “Ah! the south wind!” they said, and opened their minds in anticipation.