“Where have you come from?” exclaimed Pelle in glad surprise.
“I came by the steamer this afternoon, and went straight up to the works. Brun told me what had happened and that you were here. It must have been a threatening meeting! There was a detachment of police over there in one of the side streets. What was going on?”
“They’d planned some demonstration or other, and would in that case have met with harsh treatment, I suppose,” said Pelle gravely.
“It was well you got them to change their minds. I’ve seen these demonstrations in the South, where the police and the soldiers ride over the miserable unemployed. It’s a sad sight.”
They walked up across the fields toward “Daybreak.” “To think that you’re home again!” said Pelle, with childlike delight. “You never wrote a word about coming.”
“Well, I’d meant to stay away another couple of months. But one day I saw the birds of passage flying northward across the Mediterranean, and I began to be so homesick. It was just as well I came too, for now I can see Brun before he goes.”
“Oh, is he going away, after all? That’s been settled very quickly. This morning he couldn’t make up his mind.”
“It’s this about Peter. The old man’s fallen off very much in the last six months. But let’s walk quicker! I’m longing to see Ellen and the children. How’s the baby?”
“He’s a little fatty!” said Pelle proudly. “Nine pounds without his clothes! Isn’t that splendid? He’s a regular sunshine baby.”
It has been coming for a long time. The lark came before the frost was out of the ground, and then the starling appeared. And one day the air seemed suddenly to have become high and light so that the eye could once more see far out; there was a peculiar broad airiness in the wind—the breath of spring. It rushed along with messages of young, manly strength, and people threw back their shoulders and took deep breaths. “Ah! the south wind!” they said, and opened their minds in anticipation.
There he comes riding across the sea from the south, in the middle of his youthful train. Never before has his coming been so glorious! Is he not like the sun himself? The sea glitters under golden hoofs, and the air is quivering with sunbeam-darts caught and thrown in the wild gallop over the waves. Heigh-ho! Who’ll be the first to reach the Danish shore?