The time passed only too quickly. Exclusively as they had lived for their own affairs, it seemed as if they could never get everything finished. And one day it was as though the world was shattered about their heads. Ellen lay in bed, turning from side to side and shrieking as though an evil spirit had taken possession of her body. Pelle bent over her with a helpless expression, while at the foot of the bed sat Madam Blom; she sat there knitting and reading the papers as though nothing whatever was amiss. “Shriek away, little woman,” she said from time to time, when Ellen became silent; “that’s part of the business!” Ellen looked at her spitefully and defiantly pressed her lips together, but next moment she opened her mouth wide and roared wildly. A rope was fastened to the foot of the bed, and she pulled on this while she shrieked. Then she collapsed, exhausted. “You wicked, wicked boy,” she whispered, with a faint smile. Pelle bent over her happily; but she pushed him suddenly away; her beautiful body contorted itself, and the dreadful struggle was raging again. But at last a feeble voice relieved hers and filled the home with a new note. “Another mouth to fill,” said Madam Blom, holding the new-born child in the air by one leg. It was a boy.
Pelle went about blushing and quite bewildered, as though something had happened to him that no one else had ever experienced. At first he took Master Beck’s work home with him and looked after the child himself at night. Every other moment he had to put down his work and run in to the mother and child. “You are a wonderful woman, to give me such a child for a kiss,” he said, beaming, “and a boy into the bargain! What a man he’ll be!”
“So it’s a boy!” said the “family.” “Don’t quite lose your head!”
“That would be the last straw!” said Pelle gravely.
The feminine members of the family teased him because he looked after the child. “What a man—perhaps he’d like to lie in child-bed, too!” they jeered.
“I don’t doubt it,” growled Stolpe. “But he’s near becoming an idiot, and that’s much more serious. And it pains me to say it, but that’s the girl’s fault. And yet all her life she has only heard what is good and proper. But women are like cats—there’s no depending on them.”
Pelle only laughed at their gibes. He was immeasurably happy.
And now Lasse managed to find his way to see them! He had scarcely received the news of the event, when he made his appearance just as he was. He was full of audaciously high spirits; he threw his cap on the ground outside the door, and rushed into the bedroom as though some one were trying to hold him back.
“Ach, the little creature! Did any one ever see such an angel!” he cried, and he began to babble over the child until Ellen was quite rosy with maternal pride.
His joy at becoming a grandfather knew no limits. “So it’s come at last, it’s come at last!” he repeated, over and over again. “And I was always afraid I should have to go to my grave without leaving a representative behind me! Ach, what a plump little devil! He’s got something to begin life on, he has! He’ll surely be an important citizen, Pelle! Just look how plump and round he is! Perhaps a merchant or a manufacturer or something of that sort! To see him in his power and greatness—but that won’t be granted to Father Lasse.” He sighed. “Yes, yes, here he is, and how he notices one already! Perhaps the rascal’s wondering, who is this wrinkled old man standing there and coming to see me in his old clothes? Yes, it’s Father Lasse, so look at him well, he’s won his magnificence by fair means!”