Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 11).djvu/53



[Involuntarily, a little timidly.] Why did they have to?

What?

To bite it?

Why, because they couldn't keep body and soul together on account of the rats and all the little rat-children, you see, young master.

Ugh! Poor people! Have they so many of them?

Yes, it was all alive and swarming with them. [Laughs with quiet glee.] They came creepy-crawly up into the beds all night long. They plumped into the milk-cans, and they went pittering and pattering all over the floor, backwards and forwards, and up and down.

[Softly, to ] I shall never go there, Auntie.

But then I came—I, and another along with me. And we took them with us, every one—the sweet little creatures! We made an end of every one of them.