and not this poor linen that the wind blew right through; and a
laborer who kept himself could easily make his two krones a day.
That was something different from their master's miserable eighty
ores and finding themselves in everything.

Pelle had heard the same thing often before--from his father, from
Ole and Anders, from Karna and a hundred others who had been there.
In the winter, when the air was thick with frost and snow and the
needs of the poor, there was nothing else talked about in the little
villages at home; and in the minds of those who had not been on
the island themselves, but had only heard the tales about it, the
ideas produced were as fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the
window-panes. Pelle was perfectly well aware that even the poorest
boys there always wore their best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping
with sugar on it as often as they liked. There money lay like dirt
by the roadside, and the Bornholmers did not even take the trouble
to stoop and pick it up; but Pelle meant to pick it up, so that
Father Lasse would have to empty the odds and ends out of the sack
and clear out the locked compartment in the green chest to make room
for it; and even that would be hardly enough. If only they could
begin! He shook his father's hand impatiently.

"Yes, yes," said Lasse, almost in tears. "You mustn't be impatient."
He looked about him irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of
all this splendor, and could not even find a humble situation for
himself and the boy. He could not understand it. Had the whole world
changed since his time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the
last cart drove off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly
after it, and then he and the boy together carried the green chest
up to a wall, and trudged hand in hand up toward the town.