The children were always out watching the progress made. They could not understand how the delicate crocus could push straight up out of the frozen ground without freezing to death, but died when it came into the warm room. Every day they wrapped some snowdrops in paper and laid them on Brun’s table—they were “snowdrop-letters”—and then hovered about in ungovernable excitement until he came in from the fields, when they met him with an air of mystery, and did all they could to entice him upstairs.
Out in the fields they were nearly finished with the excavations, and were only waiting for the winter water to sink in order to cart up gravel and stone and begin the foundations; the ground was too soft as yet.
Old Brun was not so active now after his confinement to bed; although there was not much the matter with him, it had weakened him. He allowed Pelle a free hand with the works, and said Yea and Amen to everything he proposed. “I can’t keep it all in my head,” he would say when Pelle came to suggest some alteration; “but just do as you like, my son, and it’s sure to be right.” There were not enough palpable happenings down there to keep his mind aglow, and he was too old to hear it grow and draw strength from that. His faith, however, merely shifted from the Cause over to Pelle; he saw him alive before him, and could lean upon his youthful vigor.
He had given up his work on the plans. He could not keep at it, and contented himself with going the round of the fields two or three times a day and watching the men. The sudden flame of energy that Pelle’s youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. He no longer measured himself by Pelle, and was not jealous of his taking the lead in anything, but simply admired him and kept carefully within the circle of those for whom Pelle acted providence. Ellen treated him like a big child who needed a great deal of care, and the children of course looked upon him as their equal.
When he went his round of the fields, he generally had Boy Comfort by the hand; the two could both keep pace with one another and converse together. There was one thing that interested them both and kept them in great excitement. The stork was expected every day back at the Hill Farm, and when it came it would bring a baby to Mother Ellen. The expectation was not an unmixed pleasure. The stork always bit the mother in the leg when he came with a baby for her. Boy Comfort’s own mother died of the bite; he was wise enough to know that now. The little fellow looked upon Ellen as his mother, and went about in a serious, almost depressed, mood. He did not talk to the other children of his anxiety, for fear they would make fun of him; but when he and the old man walked together in the fields they discussed the matter, and Brun, as the older and wiser, came to the conclusion that there was no danger. All the same, they always kept near the house so as to be at hand.
One day Pelle stayed at home from work, and Ellen did not get up as usual. “I’m going to lie here and wait for the stork,” she said to Boy Comfort. “Go out and watch for it.” The little boy took a stick, and he and Brun tramped round the house; and when they heard Ellen cry out, they squeezed one another’s hands. It was such a disturbed day, it was impossible to keep anything going straight; now a carriage drove up to the door with a fat woman in it, now it was Lasse Frederik who leaped upon his bicycle and raced down the field-path, standing on the pedals. Before Boy Comfort had any idea of it, the stork had been there, and Ellen was lying with a baby boy on her arm. He and Brun went in together to congratulate her, and they were both equally astonished. The old man had to be allowed to touch the baby’s cheek.
“He’s still so ugly,” said Ellen, with a shy smile, as she lifted the corner of the shawl from the baby’s head. Then she had to be left quiet, and Brun took Boy Comfort upstairs with him.
Pelle sat on the edge of the bed, holding Ellen’s hand, which in a few hours had become white and thin. “Now we must send for ‘Queen Theresa,’ ” she said.
“Shan’t we send for your mother too?” asked Pelle, who had often proposed that they should take the matter into their own hands, and go and see the old people. He did not like keeping up old quarrels.
Ellen shook her head. “They must come of their own accord,” she said decidedly. She did not mind for herself, but they had looked down upon Pelle, so it was not more than fair that they should come and make it up.
“But I have sent for them,” said Pelle. “That was what Lasse Frederik went about. You mustn’t have a baby without help from your mother.”
In less than a couple of hours Madam Stolpe had arrived. She was much moved, and to hide it she began turning the house inside out for clean cloths and binders, scolding all the time. A nice time, indeed, to send for anybody, when it was all over!
Father Stolpe was harder.
