In a gateway a child was standing—a little boy, blue in the face from cold with a big basket on his arm. He was looking at two dogs fighting in the centre of the street and making the frozen dust fly about. He started when the dogs came tumbling near the place where he was standing.
“Are you afraid?” asked Jenny. As the boy did not answer, she continued: “Would you like me to see you past them?” He came to her side immediately, but did not speak.
“Which way are you going? Where do you live?”
“Did you come on an errand all the way here, such a little boy?—it was very brave of you.”
“We deal with Aases in this street because father knows him,” was the boy’s answer. “This basket is so heavy.”
Jenny looked about her; the street was nearly empty:
“Give it to me. I will carry it for you a bit of the way.”
“Take my hand till we have got past those dogs. How cold your hands are! Have you no gloves?”
“Put your other hand in my muff. You won’t? You think it a silly thing for a boy to carry a muff—is that it?”
She remembered Nils when he was small; she had often longed for him. He was big now and had many friends; he was at an age when it was no fun to walk about with an elder sister. He came seldom to her studio now. The year she had been abroad and the months she had spent with Helge had changed their relations; perhaps when he got older they would be friends again as before. They probably would, for they were fond of each other, but just now he was happy without her. She wished he were a small boy now, so that she could take him on her lap and tell him stories full of adventures while she washed and undressed him and kissed him—or a little bigger, as in the time when they went out together for excursions in Nordmarken, and the road to the butcher’s was long and full of remarkable happenings.
“No—the teacher is so strict. Oscar goes to school, but we shan’t be together, for he is being moved into the second form.”
After a short pause Jenny spoke again: “Aren’t you sorry there is no snow? You have got the hill by the bay where you can toboggan. Have you got a sled?”
They had turned into another street. Jenny let go the boy’s hand and looked at the basket. It was so heavy, and Ausjen was so small—so she kept it, although she did not like to be seen with a poor little urchin in a good street. She would have like to take him to the confectioner’s, but thought it would be rather awkward if she met any one she knew there.