It had snowed. Not outside; outside it was raining, the way it mostly rains on the coast in December. It had snowed in the hallway, right in front of the red door, a little heap of icing-sugar snow with a tiny washing line standing in it.
The line was strung between a candlestick and a pine cone. On it hung three red-and-white striped socks, a pair of mittens so small they would have fitted a mouse, and a blanket with a hole in it. Jonas held his breath. Lea said: “The gnome is doing the washing.”
Washing day had been Tove’s idea. Tove, Mille’s little sister, was five and thought Mille washed far too rarely. “Your socks stand up on their own,” she had said, which was not quite true, but almost. So they had washed in a thimble of soapy water until the hallway smelled of lavender.
Hanging it up was the hard half. Tove wanted the line high, Mille wanted it low, and Grandfather Aske wanted some peace, which is why he simply tied the line wherever he happened to be standing. Then came the wind. There is no wind in a hallway, people say. There is, when the front door opens.
Lea had opened the front door to check on the rain. The gust got under the line, and three socks flew down the hallway like small striped birds. One landed on Molly. Molly stayed where she was. She had decided that this was not her problem.
Mille ran after the socks, Tove ran after Mille, and Aske called from the step that nobody should run, please, laundry was no reason for haste. In the end everything was hanging again, except the sock on Molly. That one stayed until Molly got up, and then lay on the rug like a small striped accident.
When Jonas and Lea came down in the morning, all was calm. The line hung, the washing did not flutter, and in the snow lay a note: Please open the front door quietly. We are drying. Jonas read it to Lea twice, and both of them left the house on tiptoe.
Nobody found the sock on the rug. That is to say: Molly found it, and from then on she slept on it every night, a large cat on a tiny striped sock. Tove called it theft. Mille called it neighbourliness. Aske said nothing and, for the first time in years, washed his hat of his own accord.
