think about it. So he just went on.

Now he had reached the further end of the ridge. He lay down in the
ditch to recover his breath after his long walk; he was tired and
hungry, but in excellent spirits. Down there at his feet, only half
a mile distant, lay the town. There was a cheerful glitter about it;
from its hundreds of fireplaces the smoke of midday fires curled
upward into the blue sky, and the red roofs laughed roguishly into
the beaming face of the day. Pelle immediately began to count the
houses; not wishing to exaggerate, he had estimated them at a million
only, and already he was well into the first hundred.

But in the midst of his counting he jumped up. What did the people
down there get for dinner? They must surely live well there! And was
it polite to go on eating until one was quite full, or should one lay
down one's spoon when one had only half finished, like the landowners
when they attended a dinner? For one who was always hungry this was
a very important question.

There was a great deal of traffic on the high-road. People were
coming and going; some had their boxes behind them in a cart, and
others carried their sole worldly possessions in a bag slung over
their shoulders, just as he did. Pelle knew some of these people,
and nodded to them benevolently; he knew something about all of them.
There were people who were going to the town--his town--and some were
going farther, far over the sea, to America, or even farther still,
to serve the King there; one could see that by their equipment and
the frozen look on their faces. Others were merely going into the
town to make a hole in their wages, and to celebrate May-day. These
came along the road in whole parties, humming or whistling, with