“Good evening!” he answered aloud, delighted to return to human society.
“Hush! You mustn’t shout!” she said peremptorily.
“Why not?” Pelle himself was whispering now. He was feeling quite concerned. “Because you mustn’t! Donkey! Come, I’ll show you something. No, nearer still!”
Pelle pushed his head forward through the tall elder-bush, and suddenly she put her two hands about his head and kissed him violently and pushed him back. He tried gropingly to take hold of her, but she stood there laughing at him. Her face glowed in the darkness. “You haven’t heard anything about it!” she whispered. “Come, I’ll tell you!”
Now he was smiling all over his face. He pushed his way eagerly into the elder-bush. But at the same moment he felt her clenched fist strike his face. She laughed crazily, but he stood fixed in the same position, as though stunned, his mouth held forward as if still awaiting a kiss. “Why do you hit me?” he asked, gazing at her brokenly.
“Because I can’t endure you! You’re a perfect oaf, and so ugly and so common!”
“I have never done anything to you!”
“No? Anyhow, you richly deserved it! What did you want to kiss me for?”
Pelle stood there helplessly stammering. The whole world of his experience collapsed under him. “But I didn’t!” he at last brought out; he looked extraordinarily foolish. Manna aped his expression. “Ugh! Bugh! Take care, or you’ll freeze to the ground and turn into a lamp-post! There’s nothing on the hedge here that will throw light on your understanding!”
With a leap Pelle was over the hedge. Manna took him hastily by the hand and drew him through the bushes. “Aina and Dolores will be here directly. Then we’ll play,” she declared.