Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

on capitally in town, and he surely did not want them to become stupid peasants! If he thought so, however, she supposed it was right; he was generally right.

Then it was certainly time they gave notice; there was not much more than a month to April removing-day.

On Sundays they packed the perambulator and made excursions into the surrounding country, just as in the old days when Lasse Frederik was the only child and sat in his carriage like a little crown-prince. Now he wheeled the carriage in which Boy Comfort sat in state; and when Sister grew tired she was placed upon the apron with her legs hanging down. They went in a different direction each time, and came to places that even Lasse Frederik did not know. Close in to the back of the town lay nice old orchards, and in the midst of them a low straw-thatched building, which had evidently once been the dwelling-house on a farm. They came upon it quite by chance from a side-road, and discovered that the town was busy building barracks beyond this little idyll too, and shutting it in. When the sun shone they sat down on a bank and ate their dinner; Pelle and Lasse Frederik vied with one another in performing feats of strength on the withered grass; and Ellen hunted for winter boughs to decorate the house with.

On one of their excursions they crossed a boggy piece of ground on which grew willow copse; behind it rose cultivated land. They followed the field roads with no definite aim, and chanced upon an uninhabited, somewhat dilapidated house, which stood in the middle of the rising ground with a view over Copenhagen, and surrounded by a large, overgrown garden. On an old, rotten board stood the words “To let,” but nothing was said as to where application was to be made.

“That’s just the sort of house you’d like,” said Ellen, for Pelle had stopped.

“It would be nice to see the inside,” he said. “I expect the key’s to be got at the farm up there.”

Lasse Frederik ran up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who wore a stand-up collar and was smoking a cigar.

The house belonged to the hill farm, and had been built for the parents of the present owner. The old people had had the odd idea of calling it “Daybreak,” and the name was painted in large letters on the east gable. The house had stood empty since they died some years ago, and looked strangely lifeless; the windowpanes were broken and looked like dead eyes, and the floors were covered with filth.

“No, I don’t like it!” said Ellen.

Pelle showed her, however, that the house was good enough, the doors and windows fitted well, and the whole needed only to be overhauled. There were four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, and some rooms above, one of these being a large attic facing south. The garden was more than an acre in extent, and in the yard was an outhouse fitted up for fowls and rabbits, the rent was four hundred krones.

Pelle and Lasse Frederik went all over it again and again, and made the most wonderful discoveries; but when Pelle heard, the price, he grew serious. “Then we may as well give it up,” he said.

Ellen did not answer, but on the way home she reckoned it out to herself; she could see how disappointed he was. “It’ll be fifteen krones more a month than we now pay,” she suddenly exclaimed. “But supposing we could get something out of the garden, and kept fowls! Perhaps, too, we might let the upper floor furnished.”

Pelle looked gratefully at her. “I’ll undertake to get several hundred krones’ worth out of the garden,” he said.

They were tired out when they got home, for after all it was a long way out. “It’s far away from everything,” said Ellen. “You’d have to try to buy a secondhand bicycle.” Pelle suddenly understood from the tone of her voice that she herself would be lonely out there.

“We’d better put it out of our thoughts,” he said, “and look for a three-roomed flat in town. The other is unpractical after all.”

When he returned from his work the following evening, Ellen had a surprise for him. “I’ve been out and taken the house,” she said. “It’s not so far from the tram after all, and we get it for three hundred krones the first year. The man promised to put it all into good order by removing-day. Aren’t you glad?”

“Yes, if only you’ll be happy there,” said Pelle, putting his arms round her.

The children were delighted. They were to live out there in the bright world into which they had peeped, as a rule, only on very festive occasions⁠—to wander about there every day, and always eat the food they brought with them in the open air.

A week later they moved out. Pelle did not think they could afford to hire men to do the removing. He borrowed a four-wheeled handcart⁠—the same that had carried Ellen’s furniture from Chapel Road⁠—and in the course of Saturday evening and Sunday morning he and Lasse Frederik took out the things. “Queen Theresa” gave Ellen a helping hand with the packing. The last load was done very quickly, as they had to be out of the town before church-time. They half ran with it, Boy Comfort having been placed in a tub on the top of the load. Behind came Ellen with little Anna, and last of all fat “Queen Theresa” with some pot plants that had to be taken with special care. It was quite a procession.

They were in a tremendous bustle all day. The cleaning had been very badly done and Ellen and “Queen Theresa” had to do it all over again. Well, it was only