“Didn’t you weigh as much then as you do now?” asked one of the men, and embraced her.
“Don’t play the fool with the little thing!” cried another. “Don’t you see she’s crying? Take her on your lap and sing her a lullaby— then she’ll believe you are Lasse-Basse!”
Raging, she snatched up a bottle. “Will you hold your tongue with your jeering? Or you’ll get this on the head!” Her greasy features seemed to run together in her excitement.
They let her be, and she sat there sobbing, her hands before her face. “Is your father still alive?” she asked. “Then give him my respects—just say the Sow sends her respects—you can safely call me the Sow!—and tell him he’s the only person in the world I have to thank for anything. He thought well of me, and he brought me the news of mother’s death.”
Pelle sat there listening with constraint to her tearful speech, with an empty smile. He had knives in his bowels, he was so empty, and the beer was going to his head. He remembered all the details of Stone Farm, where he had first seen and heard the Sow, just as Father Lasse had recalled her home and her childhood to her. But he did not connect any further ideas with that meeting; it was a long time ago, and—”isn’t she going to give me anything to eat?” he thought, and listened unsympathetically to her heavy breathing.
The sailors sat looking at her constrainedly; a solemn silence lay on their mist-wreathed faces; they were like drunken men standing about a grave. “Give over washing the decks now—and get us something to drink!” an old fellow said suddenly. “Each of us knows what it is to have times of childish innocence come back to him, and I say it’s a jolly fine thing when they will peep through the door at old devils like us! But let the water stop overboard now, I say! The more one scours an old barge the more damage comes to light! So, give us something to drink now, and then the cards, ma’am!”
She stood up and gave them what they asked for; she had mastered her emotion, but her legs were still heavy.
“That’s right—and then we’ve got a sort of idea that to-day is Sunday! Show us your skill, ma’am, quick!”
“But that costs a krone, you know!” she said, laughing.
They collected the money and she went behind the bar and undressed. She reappeared in her chemise, with a burning candle in her hand….