Pelle went along Vesterbro Street. The summer holidays were just over, and the pavement on the Figaro side was crowded with sunburnt people— business-men, students and college girls—who were conspicuous in the throng by their high spirits. They had just returned to town, and still had the scent of fresh breeze and shore about them: it was almost as good as a walk in the country. And if he wanted to go farther out into the world, he could do that too; there were figures enough in the Vesterbro neighborhood to arrest his fancy and carry him forth. It was like a quay on which people from all parts of the world had agreed to meet—artists, seamen and international agents. Strange women came sailing through the crowd, large, exotic, like hot-house fruits; Pelle recognized them from the picture of the second-hand dealer’s daughter in the “Ark,” and knew that they belonged to the international nursing corps. They wore striped costumes, and their thick, fair hair emitted a perfume of foreign lands, of many ports and routes, like the interior of steamers; and their strong, placid faces were big with massage. They floated majestically down the current like full-rigged vessels. In their wake followed some energetic little beings who also belonged to the show, and had decked themselves out to look like children, with puffed sleeves, short skirts, and hair tied up with ribbons. Feeble old men, whom the sun had enticed out, stood in silent wonder, following the lovely children with their eyes.
Pelle felt a peculiar pleasure in being carried along with this stream which flowed like life itself, broad and calm. The world was greater than he had thought, and he took no side for or against anything, but merely wondered over its variety.
He came home from the library at two, with a large volume of statistics under his arm. Ellen received him with red eyes.
“Have your lodgers been making things unpleasant for you again?” he asked, looking into her face. She turned her head away.
“Did you get the money for your work?” she asked instead of answering.
“No, the man wasn’t in the shop himself. They’re coming here to pay.”
“Then we haven’t got a farthing, and I’ve got no dinner for you!” She tried to smile as she spoke, but her heavy eyelids quivered.
“Is that all?” said Pelle, putting his arm round her. “Why didn’t you make me some porridge? I should have liked a good plateful of that.”
“I have made it, but you’ll get hardly anything else, and that’s no food for a man.”