street boy, that he possessed four real pennies, and that he had bought the
gingerbread lady, and ate her up. And so they lay on the counter for days
and weeks, till they grew hard and dry; but the thoughts of the maiden
became ever more tender and womanly. ‘Ah well, it is enough for me that I
have been able to live on the same counter with him,’ said she one day;
when suddenly, ‘crack,’ and she broke in two. ‘Ah,’ said the gingerbread
man to himself, ‘if she had only known of my love, she would have kept
together a little longer.’ And here they both are, and that is their history,”
said the cake man. “You think the history of their lives and their silent love,
which never came to anything, very remarkable; and there they are for
you.” So saying, he gave Joanna the gingerbread man, who was still quite
whole-and to Knud the broken maiden; but the children had been so much
impressed by the story, that they had not the heart to eat the lovers up.
The next day they went into the churchyard, and took the two cake
figures with them, and sat down under the church wall, which was covered
with luxuriant ivy in summer and winter, and looked as if hung with rich
tapestry. They stuck up the two gingerbread figures in the sunshine among
the green leaves, and then told the story, and all about the silent love which
came to nothing, to a group of children. They called it, “love,” because the
story was so lovely, and the other children had the same opinion. But when
they turned to look at the gingerbread pair, the broken maiden was gone! A
great boy, out of wickedness, had eaten her up. At first the children cried
about it; but afterwards, thinking very probably that the poor lover ought
not to be left alone in the world, they ate him up too: but they never forgot
the story.
The two children still continued to play together by the elder-tree, and
under the willow; and the little maiden sang beautiful songs, with a voice
that was as clear as a bell. Knud, on the contrary, had not a note of music in
him, but knew the words of the songs, and that of course is something. The
people of Kjøge, and even the rich wife of the man who kept the fancy
shop, would stand and listen while Joanna was singing, and say, “She has
really a very sweet voice.”
