FOOTNOTES:
[1] “What Happened to Inger Johanne.”
II
AT THE PARSONAGE
The boat bumped and scraped against the wharf. We had arrived. Hurrah!
The instant Karsten set foot on the wharf, he was off and away at full speed up the hill, and swinging into the avenue that led to the Parsonage.
On my way up, I happened to think of some strawberry patches I had known the summer before, and I simply had to go a little aside on the hill to look at them. Yes, there they were, with specks of red shining out between the leaves and stones. Good!
But now I could see Aunt Magda’s garden hat at the end of the avenue and I must hurry, for she would be wondering what had become of me. I began to run, and soon sprang into her open arms. I put both my arms around her and squeezed her frightfully hard till she shrieked. I always do that with any one I like awfully well, you see.
On the Parsonage steps sat Uncle’s friend, the queer old lawyer, Mr. Witt, with his mass of bristling white hair and his sharp eyes.
And now Great-Aunt came. She is aunt to Mother and Aunt Magda and is awfully old. Great-Aunt thinks she knows everything, I do believe. No matter what incredible thing happens in the town or in the world, she insists that she foresaw long ago that it would happen. “There! Didn’t I know it? No need to tell me,” says Great-Aunt.
Between you and me, I will own that I cannot like her; but she is frightfully clever, and Aunt Magda daren’t do a thing except just what Great-Aunt wishes.
“Well,” said Great-Aunt, looking me over, “seems to me you had better stop growing now. You will soon be so tall that you can look into people’s second-story windows.”
Great-Aunt is a good half a head taller than I, so she had better think of her own height; but I didn’t say that. I only curtsied nicely and gave her all the proper greetings from Mother and Father.
Karsten had done nothing but run around through the rooms without greeting any one, shouting, “Where is Hedvig? Where is Dan?” Ugh! that rude Karsten! What would Mother think of his not greeting anybody, but just running around asking for the milkmaid and the dog? I must say it was decidedly necessary that I should come and behave properly. When I choose, I can behave myself charmingly, almost like a grown-up young lady. I say, “What, please?” or “I beg your pardon?” to people sometimes even when I hear perfectly what they say; and when I drink from a cup or glass I curl my little finger out in the air, for that is what I have seen fine ladies do.
Well, there I sat and drank chocolate and talked grown-up talk; and presently Karsten, warm and out of breath, came in from the kitchen.
“My! Hedvig and Dan have grown awfully little since last summer,” said he.
“Is that so? Has Hedvig, too, grown little?” asked Great-Aunt.
Yes, Karsten thought she had shrunken remarkably.
Oh, that pleasant old living-room at the Parsonage! It has a low ceiling, and all the walls are crowded with pictures. There are Luther and Melancthon, and the King in Leire and Gustavus Adolphus and Wellington and Bishop Gislesen and his wife, and Skipper Marenssen from down on the shore, and William of Orange with his crown and sceptre. Uncle goes around and talks to them sometimes as if they were alive and could answer him.
There are green woven pieces over the sofas and chairs, and the windows are full of fuchsias, always in bloom. Great-Aunt and Aunt Magda sit, each on her own side of a table between the windows.
Great-Aunt has many interesting things in her work-box, a basket carved from a cherrystone, a corkscrew as little as a fly, and other queer things. I look at them when Great-Aunt is out. I should not dare to at any other time.
The door stood open, and summer fragrance was wafted in. Between the white rails of the garden fence, I could see bunches of currants, clear and red, and I knew that in the garden there were raspberries as big as the cook’s thimble, and garden strawberries so big they had the distinction of being laid out on pieces of roof tiles to ripen. Hurrah! What a good time we should have! Suddenly I sprang up and for pure joy leaped down the steps four or five at a time to the grass below.
“See that now!” said the old lawyer still sitting on the steps. “And I had thought you a grown-up young lady!” This embarrassed me a little, but I pretended not to notice it.
The whole of the first day, I went about visiting the places and the people I had known the year before. First, I went to the men’s room to see Jon. He was poorly, he said, and had a stitch in his side a foot long. It was a great deal worse because he had had to row out to the steamer for us,—which he needn’t have done if children only stayed in their own homes as was proper, he thought. He was not so very polite,—he usually isn’t—but I never trouble myself in the least about that.
“Oh, you’ll be all right soon, Jon,” I said.
“Humph! It would be pretty bad for other folk if I weren’t,” said Jon, looking much offended.
Later I was in the henhouse and saw a hen sitting on her nest, and in the pig-pen where I scratched a pig’s back with a stick. “Piggy, piggy, piggy!” “Uf, uf, uf,” said the pig. Then I went to the cow-house and the barn, and last of all to the churchyard,—the church is right near the Parsonage, you see,—where I went around and read all the verses on the gravestones, although I knew most of them by heart.
It is an awfully pleasant churchyard, with big, plump maple-trees, through which the sunlight falls in flecks and patches on the tall grass and sunken graves, where the old sailors and their wives lie buried. Some have beautiful gravestones with verses on them which Uncle wrote. Round the churchyard is a very broad stone wall. Karsten and I get up on it and play tag there.
At the very farthest end of the Parsonage garden I play, all by myself, a most delightful kind of play. I am awfully fond of cows and sheep and everything about a farm. That is why I used to think I would be a milkmaid, you see, but, as I told you, I have given up that idea. I prefer to be an author.
Well, far down in the garden where nobody ever comes, under some old gooseberry-bushes, I have lots of cattle,—cows and calves and sheep and lambs! The cows are big round smooth stones; they stand in their stalls with fresh green grass before them; the calves—smaller round stones,—stand in calf-pens. Everything is nicely arranged, I assure you. The sheep and lambs are pretty white stones that I find on the shore.
Near my barns I have built a little bit of a hut of moss and stone with a tiny piece of glass in it for a window. Inside the hut there are two dolls,—the milkmaids who take care of the cows. Oh, I love all such planning and arranging and pretending!
But when I happened to speak of it one day, that horrid old lawyer began to make fun of me because I at my age could find pleasure in such make-believe things. And somehow after that, I began to be tired of my cattle farm under the gooseberry-bushes. It would be a different matter if one could have a real cow to take care of.
In the south meadow that summer there was a big brown-and-white cow named Brownie. She was so quarrelsome that she could not be with the other cows. Great-Aunt told Karsten and me to look out for ourselves when near her, because she was very cross. But I used to go often to look at her, and soon I had a tremendous desire that Brownie should be my cow, as it were, and that I should take the entire care of her myself.
One day I decided that I would put Brownie in the old smithy that no one used any more; and there I would feed her and milk her every day. But first I must have a collar for her; so I went to the cow-house, where I found an old one. It was firmly fastened in a stall, but I jiggled and twisted and jerked and tugged at it until I finally got it out. Then I hammered it into the wall of the smithy. The next thing was to get Brownie into her new quarters.
The first time I went near her she gave me such a forcible push in my chest that I fell right over. However, I don’t give up very easily, and I coaxed and pushed and pulled at Brownie so long that at last I got her into the smithy and the collar on her neck. Hurrah! Now I had a cow-house and a cow with a collar on, just for myself alone. What fun!
I tore up a lot of grass and laid it before her so that she should not be hungry, and I fastened the door with a stick. Of course I must milk her. The milk I could set up on the shelf there in the smithy; perhaps I could churn butter! As for cream porridge, there would be no difficulty at all about having that now as often as I wished.
I stole into the kitchen to get something I could milk into, but Great-Aunt came upon me so suddenly that I couldn’t get hold of anything but a pint measure. That was pretty small for the use I had for it, but I must try to make it do.
I don’t know whether any of you ever tried to milk a cow, but I can tell you that it isn’t easy to milk one that kicks and thrashes its tail about—especially if you have to milk into a pint measure. At last I got the measure full, however, and set it up on the shelf. Of course it was rather sooty and dirty there, but I would wash the shelf in the morning. I gave Brownie a new supply of grass and then left her for the night. I had not said a word about all my plans for the cow to a single person.
Well! In the evening Hedvig, the milkmaid, came to the house frightened almost out of her wits. She couldn’t find Brownie anywhere, and I could see that she was ready to believe that the goblins had been at work. Excitement ran high, especially with Great-Aunt.
“Didn’t I know it? You shall soon both hear and see that something dreadful has happened to Brownie,” Great-Aunt said solemnly.
Then I had to tell where Brownie was, and that it was I who had taken her and put her in the smithy.
“There now! Did any one ever see such a girl?” said Great-Aunt. “You ought to be whipped, big as you are, to put a cow in such a place and give it neither food nor water.”
O dear! O dear! I had never thought to give the cow water the whole day!
Well, Hedvig went to the smithy and let Brownie out; so there was an end to that amusement. And when I went to get my pint measure of milk the next day, it had such a thick layer of soot and dust on it that I gave it to Dan, the dog, and I had hard work to get even him to drink it.
When we had been at the Parsonage about a fortnight, Peter, the dean’s son, came to make a visit, too. He had grown shyer and more freckled than ever since I saw him last, I thought. He spoke never a word when he was in the living-room, but it was rather jolly to have him with us, even though I now had two boys to look after instead of one. There is always something to see to with such boys,—that they cut the cheese nicely at the table, change their shirts often enough, comb their hair properly, and all such matters.
Great-Aunt was cross about many things, but one thing made her very angry, and that was if we ate any of her yellow raspberries. The red ones we might take a few of, but the yellow ones we mustn’t even think of touching.
One morning when I lay out on the grass under the avenue trees reading “Waldemar the Conqueror,” I heard all at once a mysterious rustling behind the raspberry-bushes in the garden. I peeped between the bushes and—wasn’t it just as I had thought?—there sat Karsten and Peter picking yellow raspberries and putting them into their straw hats.
When they heard me, they took to their heels, over the garden fence and off towards the churchyard. As I caught up with them, Peter said:
“If you’ll promise not to tell on us, Inger Johanne, you shall have some of the berries.” Both the boys had their hats half full.
Well, really, it is awfully mean to tattle, and the raspberries were so tempting, not one worm-eaten—and why should Peter and Karsten eat them all, I ask you? So we divided them equally and sat on one of the gravestones to eat them.
I had forgotten “Waldemar the Conqueror” that I had thrown down and left lying in the grass, and just think! When I went to get it, Dan was playing with it, and torn-out leaves were scattered all over the avenue.
“You bad, bad dog, let go, I say!”
At last I got it away from him, but he had torn out eight leaves, and crumpled and bitten several others. You may be sure I was disgusted with myself and my carelessness, but I said nothing about the book to any one. I always looked at it guiltily though, where it stood in the bookcase, knowing that Aunt Magda did not dream that anything was wrong with it. But she was always so very kind to us, that before I went away I was awfully sorry about “Waldemar the Conqueror” and those raspberries. Peter and Karsten weren’t the least bit sorry, they said, because the berries they picked were so near the ground that Great-Aunt, who is old and stout, couldn’t possibly have picked them or even have seen them; but I thought it was horrid of us, anyway.
At last I wrote a little bit of a note,—the paper wasn’t much more than an inch square,—which I gave to Aunt Magda asking her not to read it until after I had gone. In the note I told about the book and the raspberries and begged her not to be angry, as I was so sorry.
It was now towards the end of vacation. Soon there would be no more jumping in the haycocks or riding home on the big loads of hay, no more raspberries and cream for dessert at dinner, no more bonny-clabber at supper; and Saturday would be the last time that I could be Uncle’s driver this year.
When Uncle goes to the other parish church or to visit the sick, I am always allowed to drive him down to the shore. You see they have to go everywhere by boat from the Parsonage. Uncle has to ride in a funny way. He is so awfully stout that he has great difficulty in getting into a carriage, so he rides in a single sleigh, scraping over the road on wooden runners. I sit on the tiny high seat behind and crack the whip. We don’t go very fast on the road to the shore because Uncle is so heavy, but when I go back I sit in the sleigh and drive so fast that the sand spatters on my ears. It is great fun.
The day before we were to go home, one of the Cochin China hens was sick. It may have eaten some salt that had been spilled outside of the storehouse. At any rate, it was sick and ran round and round continually; it was horrid to see. The trouble must be in its head. I thought of putting a wet bandage on it, such as people use when they have headache, but to put a wet bandage on a hen that is spinning round and round would be a little difficult.
I ran in to Great-Aunt. “Oh, Great-Aunt, there is a hen that is sick and that keeps spinning round and round and round! What shall we do with it?”
“Oh, it will have to spin till it stops,” said Great-Aunt.
There was no use. Nobody here at the Parsonage understood about hens. When I went away no one would care about that poor sick thing, or do anything for it, I was sure.
I went out to the barn to speak to the milkmaid.
“Dear Hedvig, if you can’t cure that Cochin China hen, you must chop its head off, the minute I have gone.”
“Oh, no! I’d never dare do that unless Mistress herself said so.”
“Please, please do, Hedvig. No one will take any care of it when I’m not here.”
“But you know I don’t dare because of the old lady.” That was Great-Aunt.
“Oh, yes, Hedvig. You are so kind. Please do it and quickly, too.” I felt as if I ought to say this even if I didn’t believe she would do what I told her to do. The poor sick hen!
Well, our visit at the Parsonage was over and we were starting for home. Aunt Magda, Great-Aunt and Uncle and Mr. Witt, the old lawyer, went to the wharf with us, and they all stood there and waved and waved. Uncle waved his cane and Mr. Witt, who wore a linen dust-coat, waved his long coattails. Then what shouts from shore and boat!
“Good-bye!” “Good-bye!” “G-o-o-o-d-by-e!”
Jon was in the best of humors as he rowed us from the shore to the steamer. I didn’t know whether it was because he would now be rid of us for this year or the present of money I had given him, that made him so pleasant.
“Good luck to all three on your journey,” called Jon as he shoved his boat from the steamer.
For a while we could see the church tower and the roof of the Parsonage between the trees; then the steamer rounded an island and we saw them no more.
III
THE LOST KEY
Mrs. Polby is the sort of person who stands on her front steps, with arms akimbo, every minute when she isn’t working, and talks with every one who passes by. That is why she knows all that is going on; and she knows, too, every single hen in the town and every single dog and every single person.
One time she blamed me for something which I hadn’t done at all; and from that very time we became good friends!
Now you shall hear about it from beginning to end.
Mrs. Polby has a son named Karl Johan,—a pale, namby-pamby boy who is offended if you only look at him. In this, he is like his mother, who is easily offended, too, but otherwise they are very different. She is a regular roly-poly, with round eyes and round, rosy cheeks, works hard in her vegetable garden, and talks a great deal, as I have told you.
It is rather unfortunate that Karl Johan is so namby-pamby when he has such a kingly name. That’s why we tease him, calling him Karl Johan Gustavus Adolphus Kristian Fredrik Julius Cæsar Polby or other grand names; and he gets so furious that he runs home and tattles to his mother. Then Mrs. Polby stands on her steps and holds a Judgment Day for us, blaming me especially; so you can understand that she and I have never been very good friends.
Back of her house, Mrs. Polby has a big garden where she grows a quantity of cabbages which she sells in the autumn.
In the farthest end of the garden there is an old tumble-down building where she stores the cabbages until they are sold.
Although Mrs. Polby doesn’t know it, we often play hide-and-seek in that building, for there are so many closets and bins and little rooms in it where we can hide. The house is so old and rickety that there are big cracks everywhere in the floor and the walls.
One day Mother said to me, “Run down and buy two heads of cabbage from Mrs. Polby.” Off I ran like the wind, as I always do. Mrs. Polby, for a wonder, was not on her steps, but Karl Johan sat in the kitchen drinking coffee out of a big bowl.
“Well, Karl Johan Victor Emmanuel Clodevig,” said I, “have you any cabbages to sell?”
He began to scold at a great rate, his face in the bowl the whole time, but he didn’t answer my question about cabbages; so I thought it was best to find Mrs. Polby herself, and I ran out to the vegetable field.
The door of the shanty stood open, and one cabbage-head after another came dancing out. She is in there, I thought, and probably not in good humor, for the cabbages were being thrown with a certain wrathful haste. I couldn’t see Mrs. Polby herself, for she was farther inside the house.
True enough, there she was, hard at work in the midst of her cabbages, and very red in the face; she was throwing out the rotten ones, and, as I had thought, was not in a very gentle mood.
“I should like two heads of cabbage, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “But I must tell you that your son has been talking horridly to me.”
“Is that so? Well, who is it he learns such talk from, sauce-box?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said I. “But I should like the cabbages right away.”
No, she hadn’t any cabbages, she said; they all rotted and she was sick and tired of the whole business, and, anyway, she sold no cabbages to persons who called her Karl Johan nicknames.
“Do you call Julius Cæsar, and Gustavus Adolphus and Clodevig nicknames, Mrs. Polby?” I asked.
“Heathen names and dog names we have no use for in this country,” she said, “and you can go your way for you’ll get no cabbages from me. Tell your mother so, with my compliments.”
With that she went into a little closet at the back of the shanty, and slammed the door after her. Probably she slammed it a little harder than she really meant to, (for she was in a temper, you know,) and the lock caught. At the same moment the key tumbled out of the keyhole, and fell down through a crack in the floor, vanishing in the depth below.
“The key fell through a crack, Mrs. Polby,” I called.
Mrs. Polby fumbled at the door, took hold of it and pulled and pushed till the whole house shook.
“Will you unlock this door and do it at once?” she shouted.
“I can’t unlock it. The key fell through a crack and under the floor,” I shouted back.
Just think! she didn’t believe me!
“Don’t tell me such a thing as that. You unlock this door this minute!” she screamed.
Nothing I could say would make her believe that I had not the key. She kept on beating and pounding at the door and berating me for not letting her out.
“Oh, I shall suffocate in here. I certainly shall,—with my asthma!—Oh! Oh!”
It was a very small closet she was in, scarcely bigger than a wardrobe.
“Put your mouth up to that little hole in the door and I’ll run after the locksmith,” I said.
“Oh, no! Don’t go!” shrieked Mrs. Polby. “I don’t dare to stay here alone.”
What in the world should I do? There stood Mrs. Polby with her mouth close to the hole which was about as big as the bunghole in a barrel.
Sometimes her mouth disappeared while she cried, “Oh, my asthma! my asthma!”
“Karl Johan,” I shouted from the door. “Hurry! Come as fast as you can! Your mother is locked in the closet.”
He came dragging himself slowly along as if there were no need of haste.
“Hurry! Hurry!” I shouted anxiously. “She can’t breathe, she says, locked in that little place.”
“Well, let her out then,” said Karl Johan, crossly.
O dear! Like his mother, he thought it was all my doing.
“But I can’t let her out. I can’t! The key is under the floor,” I cried, stamping my foot at him. “But you can get it. You are so thin and small you can creep under the building easily. The key is right below the closet. Do go, Karl Johan.”
“Oh, do, my jewel!” cried his mother from the hole in the door. “Oh, oh, do go!”
But just imagine! He would not go, even when his mother begged him to.
“It’s full of rats under the floor,” said Karl Johan. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Then run for the locksmith,” I said. “Only do hurry.”
Well, Karl Johan went, though he took his own time about it; but I felt so sorry for poor Mrs. Polby, who was wailing piteously, that I couldn’t bear to wait for the locksmith.
“I’ll creep under the house, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “Just keep calm.”
“Oh, will you? God bless you! This is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she moaned.
So I crept under the house. It was all I could do to get along, for the ground was wet and slimy and disgustingly filthy, with old straw, broken bottles, and every kind of trash. And Karl Johan was right—rats. Ugh! But I crept and crept. Mrs. Polby stamped on the floor and called all the time so that I should know about where the key would lie.
I fumbled and fumbled in the dark. No, I could not find it. A rat ran right over my hand and I only just managed to keep myself from screaming.
“Can’t you find it?” called Mrs. Polby.
There! my hand touched it! I was so glad that I shouted loudly, “I’ve got it! I’m coming, I’m coming!” as I started to creep out. But you may well believe that it was difficult to turn one’s self around under that floor; it was about the hardest of all.
Ah-h! Now I was out in the air again! My, but it was good! Into the house I bounded, put the key in the lock and flung the door wide open.
Mrs. Polby was sitting on the floor, chalk-white in the face and without power to speak at first. In a moment, though, she threw her arms about my neck with such force that I nearly fell over backward, for she is pretty heavy, I can tell you; then she began to cry.
“I really didn’t throw the key away,” I said.
“Oh, no! The keyhole has been bad this long time—and you have saved my life——Oh! Oh!”
She kept on coughing and crying and at last said I should have five cabbages as a present; and then she cried again.
“Why do you cry now?” I asked. “Here comes Karl Johan with the locksmith.” True enough—they were coming at full speed with a very long pair of tongs.
“So you’ve been sitting under lock and key, have you?” said the locksmith.
Just imagine! I really did get five heads of cabbage as a present.
“Don’t talk to me, for I haven’t any breath,” said Mrs. Polby; but at the same minute she gave a scolding lecture to Karl Johan because he would not creep under the floor after the key.
Just imagine! I really did get five heads of cabbage as a present—and had my money besides!
So nowadays whenever I see Mrs. Polby standing on her front steps, I stop and we have a little chat; for we are the very best of friends.
IV
TOBIESEN’S GRAND PARLOR
So many strange things are always happening to me. Can you understand why? Some persons (like my aunt who went to Paris) never have anything the least bit interesting happen to them. Why, when she came home, she said (I heard her with my own ears):
“I suppose I ought to have a great deal to tell about my trip, but really nothing especial happened and I haven’t seen or done anything worth telling of.”
“If that’s so,” said Father, “your trip wasn’t worth the money it cost,” and I agreed with him entirely. If I had gone to Paris, I should have had enough to talk about continually for a month or more. At home they say that if I just go out on the front doorstep, look up and down the street, and come right in again, I have immediately a great deal to tell. It may well be, however, that I talk a little bit too much—but when so many exciting things are happening all the time, am I to keep still and not talk about them? No, indeed, I’m not that kind of person. Talk I must.
Now you shall hear how I came to be in Tobiesen’s grand parlor where none of the town folk have ever been; for it was in a curious way, as you will agree.
Tobiesen is an assistant at the Custom House—but he doesn’t look like the other officers. They are all short and stout and red-faced—at least they are in our town. But it is not so long ago that Tobiesen came here, so probably that is why he is so unlike the other officers. He is very tall and cross-looking; won’t talk to people and doesn’t associate with any one. Would you like to know what he does when he sits alone at home in the evenings? He embroiders,—works on canvas! Ingeborg, our maid, says that all men who do needlework are cross; so it isn’t strange that Tobiesen looks so glum and disagreeable, since he sits and sews on canvas every evening. He is not married, and he lives alone, a little way out of town over the new road, in a house that he has bought and made all pretty and bright with new paint. Tobiesen, as I have said, never goes anywhere and nobody ever goes to his house; yet both Mina and I have sat for a whole hour in his best parlor! and that without having any idea of doing it! I was afraid enough that time, I can tell you.
I don’t know whether it is so where you live,—that a great many wandering Gypsy tribes come to the town,—but they certainly come to ours. There are Flintian’s tribe and Griffenfeldt’s tribe and Long Sarah’s tribe, and many others.
Most of them come by land with packs on their backs full of tinware and woven baskets that they wish to sell; and they always have a crowd of dirty dark-skinned children and cross women and cross dogs with them. Some Gypsies, though, come by boat—but I don’t know any of those except Lars and Guro, who belong to Flintian’s tribe. They own a big boat exactly like a pilot-boat and travel from town to town and deal in pottery and rags. They always bring their boat to the wharf near the market-place.
My, but you should see Lars and Guro! Both are dark, lively little persons. There is only this difference between them: Guro wears as little as she can, while Lars has as much as possible on him—he is all stuffed out with clothes and rags.
Guro says that Lars is weak in the head, and that anything weak must be kept warm, so Lars wears a heavy fur cap all summer, no matter how hot the sun is there on the wharf.
Guro attends to the rag business and Lars to the pottery. He has some savings-banks of red clay in the form of a bird with a slit in the back which all the children in town are crazy to buy. Guro with bare brown legs fairly wades in the heaps of rags on the deck, and scolds at the children who stand on the wharf and watch her.
Perhaps you are wondering what Lars and Guro have to do with Tobiesen’s grand parlor. Well, just wait.
The longer Lars and Guro are in town, the crosser they get at all of us children. At first they are quite pleasant and let us go down on the deck where they are and peep into their cabin—my! but it looks disgusting—but later no such favors are to be thought of. Whether this is because Lars and Guro, when their business has brought them in some money, are always drunk, or because all the children are so horrid about teasing them, I don’t know; but the fact is that when the rag-boat has been at the wharf about a week, Lars and Guro are so angry and behave so abominably that a policeman has to stand on the wharf all day to stop Guro when she gets too outrageous. Their visit usually ends with their being told by the police to get away from our town with their boat the quickest they can.
The rag-boat had been at the wharf about four days and Lars and Guro were, even for them, in an unusually bad humor. Guro had promised me and the other children a mighty warm welcome if she once got hold of us. And on top of that she promised that she would surely get us in her clutches before she left the town, for worse children, she said, were not to be found along the whole coast. That long-legged one, the Judge’s girl, (that was I) was the worst of the whole lot. For that matter, said Guro, she didn’t care whether we were the children of priest or prophet or magistrate, she would catch us just the same.
One afternoon Mina and I went for a walk up on the new road. Not a person was in sight. Oh, yes, there was; Lars and Guro were coming down the road towards us. They walked hand in hand, staggering a little, and quarreling loudly as they came. Mina and I did not dare to pass them on that lonely road with no one else near, so we ran up the hill and hid while they passed us.
But when they were just below us, Mina called out, “Raggedy Guro—raggedy Lars!” From that came all the trouble. I was awfully provoked with Mina. Really, she might rather have let them go in peace that time.
But you should have seen and heard the commotion, then!
Guro and Lars dashed back to where they could scramble up the bank. They showed that they could both make good use of their legs, I can tell you. There was no time to be lost, for they had almost caught up with us.
Mina and I ran as we had never run in our lives before, hopped over stones, and ran and ran. Oh, how afraid I was!
Guro was after us swift as the wind; Lars had so many clothes on that he was clumsy and slow in his movements, and was very soon left behind.
For an instant, I thought it might be safest to run farther up the hill, but no, my next thought was that it was best to get to the road again, so I sprang down five or six feet at one leap—Mina after me. Guro dared not take such a leap as that. Luckily for us she had to run a roundabout way, so we had a little the start of her.
Not a sound came from Mina or me, but Guro scolded incessantly. We ran for dear life. Lars and Guro had both reached the road now, and the noise they made as they ran could be heard a long way. Oh! There stood Tobiesen’s house!
“Come, let us run into Tobiesen’s,” I exclaimed, panting. In a twinkling we were through the court and in the hall; we rushed to a door and found ourselves in a fine, well-furnished room with white shades pulled down over the windows. The key was on the inside of the parlor door and I turned it hastily. There we stood. But at that instant Lars and Guro came tramping into the hall; Guro shrieked and scolded and vowed that she would find us, sure as fate. I was horribly afraid, more so than I can describe; Mina sat herself flat on the floor with her eyes bulging with terror.
There were hasty steps in the room above us, and then from the top of the stairs came the thin, high voice that was surely Tobiesen’s, calling, “Now, in heaven’s name, what is all this rumpus?”
“We want to get hold of the girls who came home just now,” shrieked Guro with the voice she uses when she is in her most furious rages on the rag-boat.
“Came home? No one comes home here.” Tobiesen trudged down the stairs in his slippers.
“I don’t know what kind of man you are,” said Guro, “for I’ve never seen your face before; but it’s that young one of yours I want to get hold of—the one who came home here just now with that long-legged girl of the Judge’s.”
“Are you crazy, folk? I have no young one—I am not married.”
“When we find them, we’ll break every bone in their bodies,” Lars’ thick voice growled from under his fur cap and out of his muffled throat.
Mina and I looked at each other. What a frightful position we were in—only a little thin door between us and that furious Guro and Lars and with no one to protect us but Tobiesen, who might be angry with us, too!
Guro screamed louder and louder.
“If you think I am afraid of you, you make a big mistake,” she shouted. “I’m going to find them, be sure of that.” She rushed farther into the hall, and shook one of the doors. Tobiesen spoke again, his voice sounding perfectly desperate.
“See here, you two,—here—take this, but go—only go away.”
Guro’s manner and tone changed at once.
“Thanks and honor—thanks and honor—My, such a wonderful nice man! Now, truly, you can’t tell by the outside of folk how they are inside—such a wonderful nice man!”
Evidently he had given them money to make them go away.
“Now go,” Tobiesen repeated. “Go away at once.”
There! They were out of the door and he turned the key in its lock after them.
“Whew!” Tobiesen gave a long whistle of relief, but if he had known that we were in his grand parlor he’d have whistled louder yet! I had a little hope that he might go up-stairs again; but no, he went into a room just across the hall.
“Oh, Mina! How splendid that they have gone!”
“But I’m almost as afraid of Tobiesen as I am of Lars and Guro,” whispered Mina, looking up at me.
“Sh—just keep still. We must wait a little while.” We listened and listened; not a sound was to be heard in the whole house.
Perhaps we could steal away now; but, scared as we were, I simply had to see Tobiesen’s fancy work.
Everywhere in the room, on the chairs and on the sofa were placed small white covers that must surely have embroidered pieces under them. I went on tiptoe over the floor.
“Why, Mina! Really, his work isn’t so bad! Come and see.” There was an angel’s head worked on canvas in white beads on a sofa-pillow, and a harp among roses on the back of a chair.
But Mina dared not stir from the door.
“Sh-sh! Don’t talk. Come back again, Inger Johanne; he will hear you. Ugh! if he should come——”
I turned the key of the parlor door slowly, slowly round. It was great good luck for us that everything in Tobiesen’s house was so well taken care of, for the lock had just been oiled, and the key didn’t make a sound. We tiptoed out into the hall, in dead silence, only making motions to each other.
We reached the street door, turned that key as carefully as we had the other, opened the door quickly—and we were out!
When we had gone three or four steps from the house I turned and looked back. At the door stood Tobiesen staring after us. Such astonishment as his face showed I never saw on any other face. Mina and I ran down the street as fast as we could.
Well, that’s the way we escaped from Tobiesen as well as from Lars and Guro, but tell me, don’t you think it was a frightful situation for us?
Ever since that time, when I see Tobiesen in the distance, I turn and go into another street, I am so afraid he will recognize me.
In the evening of the same day that Lars and Guro had chased us, they were sent out of town for quarreling in the streets, and since then nothing has been seen of them.
V
THE DANCING-SCHOOL
A dancing-master had come to town and almost all the children were to go to his dancing-school. He was Swedish, his name was Baklind, and he had engaged a room at Madam Pirk’s.
Madam Pirk kept cows and made her living chiefly by selling milk. She sold cream, too; but into that she put potato flour so that it should look thick. She was glad to rent a room, you may be sure.
It was an immense room on the first floor and ran the whole length of the house; its big windows looked out on both the yard and the street. Under this room was the cellar where Madam Pirk kept her cows; that must have been why there was always such a peculiar odor in the room.
The wall-paper on this drawing-room represented a countless multitude of green-clad shepherds who played on golden horns in a crimson sunset glow. Midway down one of the long walls stood a monster of an old-fashioned stove, an enormous bulgy contrivance with a pipe that went straight up through the ceiling. To make a fire in that stove would take half a cord of wood, I do believe!
Fortunately for Madam Pirk and Mr. Baklind, there was no question of heating the room. The month of May had come, there was a south wind, and a constant drip-drip outside from the melting snow in the roof gutters. But probably the room was somewhat cold, for Mr. Baklind always wore his spring coat, I remember. If we children wished a little more warmth, the idea was that we should get it by dancing.
Mr. Baklind was a tall, stout man with long hair falling down over his neck. It never occurred to me then, but now I am pretty sure that he curled his hair with curling-tongs. I remember scarcely anything else about him but his legs, which were very thin. He wore striped stockings and pointed patent-leather shoes, and came every day with these dancing-shoes in his pocket, changing to them right there in the dancing-hall while we stood around looking at him.
Baklind himself was the whole orchestra; he played the violin, tramped out the rhythm, and sang, “Tra-la-la!” or Swedish songs. He was a happy fellow, that Mr. Baklind! I should like to know where he waltzes around now.
There were about thirty children who went to Baklind’s dancing-school. We stood arranged according to height; girls in a long row on one side of the room, boys on the other side. Massa was the tallest girl and I came next. Nils Trap was the tallest boy, and Massa was to have him as her partner.
Angemal Terkelsen fell to my lot, a big, awkward boy who could neither bow nor dance, and would never swing himself round except when he came to a corner of the hall, where he had to turn. At first he danced so poorly, that he had to practise all alone while the rest of us sat and watched him. He was stiff as a poker and looked bored all the time he was in the class.
I was mightily offended with Baklind because I had to have Angemal for my partner, although of course Baklind was not to blame that Angemal and I were of the same height. Still, I remember that at that time I thought it was all his fault. Dance with Angemal I must, two hours every day for six weeks.
Towards the last, however, he wasn’t so bad. Whether it was I or Baklind who had improved him, I don’t know, but he even grew rather agreeable. He found out one day that I was awfully fond of chocolate, and always after that he brought me a thick cake of chocolate, and sometimes two cakes. Angemal’s father was a storekeeper. I am afraid that many pounds of chocolate disappeared from the shop during those weeks of dancing-school.
Every evening between six and eight o’clock, Madam Pirk’s garden fence was full of street urchins who had climbed up there to look in at us who were dancing. They made a tremendous rumpus out there, threw each other down off the fence, laughed and shouted.
In the hall, the floor rocked under our sixty feet, the cows in the cellar lowed, the old stove shook and rattled. Baklind played the violin, struck one and another sinner with his bow, counted out the time: one-two-three-hop! one-two-three-hop! I shoved and dragged Angemal, and the whole hall was in a cloud of dust that sifted down from the ceiling and out of the corners and from Madam Pirk’s old straight-backed chairs.
In the breathing-time between dances, we sat and rested, like hens gone to roost, on Madam Pirk’s steep, white-scoured attic stairs; or else Baklind taught us how we should enter a room or look out of a window or do something else in a proper manner. The most beautiful, but also the most complicated way to look out of a window was the following: feet crossed, body in a curve, and arms leaning lightly on the window-sill. He added also that, having taken this position, the person ought to turn his gaze upward. I wonder if Angemal Terkelsen, or any other of us ever stands and looks out of the window in that fashion?
Once in a while Baklind would get frantic over the street boys perching on the garden fence and peeping in at us. Never in my life have I seen a person leap as our dancing-master did, when he dashed out after those boys. I am not exaggerating when I say that he took steps five or six feet long. With uplifted cane and curls flying every-which-way, he literally stretched himself out flat against Madam Pirk’s fence. But if Baklind thought he could get hold of Stian, the watchman’s boy, or George, the street-sweeper’s, he made a great mistake. They were up on the hill like a streak of lightning, pointing their fingers at him and roaring with laughter. “Such wolf-cubs—I’d like to break the noses off of those imps,” said Baklind when he came in all out of breath.
When dancing-school had lasted for about a month, the big old stove began to shake and clatter in a very disquieting manner.
“Poor old thing!” said Baklind. “He doesn’t care much for all this dancing. I think we must brace him up a little. We’ll tie a rope around him!”
Then things were lively for a few minutes. Angemal ran home for a rope. Baklind put one chair on another, balanced himself on the top one and tied the stout rope around the stove and then to some big nails in the wall.
“There! now I think the old fellow is happy!” said Baklind as he hopped down from the chairs and drew back in the hall to see how the arrangement looked.
But Baklind had that time reckoned without his hostess. The next evening Madam Pirk presented herself in the hall, her face wearing an extraordinarily displeased expression.
“What is that arrangement for?” asked Madam Pirk pointing to the rope-bound stove.
“I was afraid the old fellow would fall in a swoon,” said Baklind. “I thought it would be wise to support him a little.”
“No, thank your majesty! My stove can stand alone perfectly well.”
“As Madam will,” said Baklind. So he got up on the chairs again and took down the rope.
Two evenings later, we were dancing the polka mazurka with great gusto. Baklind played the violin, the floor rocked, the stove and even the pipe shook and rattled violently.
At home, I had heard Gunhild, one of the maids, say that to dance the polka mazurka “with bumps”—that is, bumping into the other couples, was the greatest fun in the world. I suggested to Angemal that we should dance that way, and he immediately agreed. We bumped against all the others, pushed and shoved, and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.
But all at once we heard a crash from the stove—a crash so loud that it drowned all the uproar we were making. Every one of us stopped instantly, and stared in terror at the big, old stove. And at that very moment—well, any one who has never seen a stove break all to pieces can have but a faint idea of it—at that very moment, it was as if the legs were struck from under the stove, it sprang apart in different places, and the big heavy iron pieces toppled, clanked against each other and fell with a frightful bang on the floor. The long stovepipe came last. It pitched far out in the room amongst us, and an avalanche of soot spread like thick smoke through the drawing-room. We all sprang for the door, Baklind with us. Madam Pirk and her maid came rushing into the entry. A heavy cloud of soot was pouring out of the door of the dancing-room.
“What is it?” shrieked Madam Pirk. “What is going on? Are you tearing the house down?”
“Oh, the old chap fell over. He wouldn’t stand there any longer,” said Baklind.
Madam Pirk shrieked and wept and scolded, scolded Baklind, shrieked to us that we should pack ourselves off out of her house. She didn’t wish to see even a shadow of any of us inside her doors ever again. But she wept over all the green-robed shepherds around the walls. It was indeed to be feared that they would never again play their horns in such rosy red light as heretofore.
“Well, it isn’t my fault,” said Baklind. “You wouldn’t let me tie it together.”
At this, all Madam Pirk’s wrath poured out on Baklind’s curly head.
“Is it work for a grown man to traipse around, and do nothing but dance? Well, if you don’t this minute dance out of my house, I shall call both the mayor and the police.”
Nothing would pacify her. We had danced for the last time in Madam Pirk’s big room.
During the two weeks that remained of the course, we had to crowd ourselves together in Baklind’s room at the hotel; and Angemal and I were not allowed to dance the polka mazurka “with bumps” any more.
VI
OUR BONFIRE ON ST. JOHN’S NIGHT
I don’t know anything more delightful than St. John’s Night,—beautiful, bright St. John’s Night.
There are, though, three awfully jolly days in the year: Christmas, my birthday, and St. John’s or Midsummer Day.
Christmas, particularly Christmas Eve, is something very special; it stands entirely by itself, and seems to mean Father and Mother and all the family. No one should be with us then except those we are most fond of—those that belong here at home.
Then my birthday is my very own day. What I like best about that are the presents I get and also that I am a year older. For, really, isn’t it tedious to keep on being twelve years old everlastingly? Of course, when any one asked me last year how old I was, I always said, “In my thirteenth year.” That sounded older,—not so unspeakably childish.
But St. John’s Day! Then there is pleasure and sport for everybody. There is no school; the fields everywhere are bright with spring flowers, and the houses are decorated outside with little birch-trees standing beside the doors. Inside, birch leaves trim the stoves, fresh garlands hang from the ceiling around the walls, buttercups and daisies and long waving grasses are in bouquets in all the rooms.
And perhaps we have cream porridge for dinner.
Last and best of all, though, are the St. John’s bonfires in the evening, blazing and shining wherever you look.
No one stays at home on St. John’s Night except the very old folks. The other people of the town row out to the islands with big lunch-baskets and bottles of fruit-juice.
Many take accordions with them, and the music, coming over the water, sounds sad and joyful at the same time. It wouldn’t seem like St. John’s Night at all if Agent Levorsen did not play “Sons of Norway” out in the summer night on Green Island. The sailor boys at the Point play such tunes as:
“Naa kommer jenta med kjolen grön.
Aa hei du, aa haa!”[2]
And everything is oh, so jolly and gay!
On the hills round about in the town the old people sit among the small houses and look at the blazing fires and think of the days when they were young and had jolly times out on the islands on St. John’s Night.
“Yes, yes!” say the old women, sitting with their hands under their aprons and wagging their heads sideways.
One after another the fires are lighted. “See there!” “And see there!” “And there!” The air is warm and soft and still. The islands are swarming with people who eat cake and drink fruit-juice and laugh and dance and sometimes fight.
The bonfires crackle and flash up against the dark sky and the sparks fly around far and near. Suddenly a piece of board or a charred butter-firkin tumbles down from the fire and the boys make wagers as to which of them can come nearest to the fire without burning himself. Their faces are so black with soot that they look like chimney-sweeps.
O bright, jolly St. John’s Night!
But now you shall hear how we celebrated it once. I shall never forget that celebration, for it ended in terror.
We shouldn’t have thought of having a bonfire if it hadn’t been for Andreas, a boy who came from near Stavanger last spring. His father, Oscar Eisland, works at the wharf in Espeviken, and he and his wife and five children live in a tiny red house on our hill. That is why I know the family so well.
In their house there are two beds, one bench, and one table, and nothing more except newspaper pictures on the walls; pictures of murders, weddings in Russia, kings, and so on.
Although Oscar and his family are surely not rich, I have never seen any people as happy as they are. That is why I like so much to be up there.
Well, it was Andreas who suggested that we children who lived on the hill should have a St. John’s Night bonfire of our very own. Children where he came from did that, he said; and my brother Karsten and I thought it would be awfully good fun.
We were not going to say a word to any one about it. It was to be a glorious surprise for the whole town when all at once a big bonfire blazed out on our hill.
But it wasn’t easy to find things to burn, I can tell you. All that we collected we were to hide in a place on the hill that we called “Sahara.” We had many places on the hill that we had given names to, “Nagasaki,” “Paris,” and so on; but “Sahara” was the best for a hiding-place.
Andreas, Karsten, and I each had our particular work to do. Karsten was to get kerosene for us to pour over the fire to make it burn very briskly. And just think! He took an empty bottle and went around to all the cooks on our street and asked them for a few drops of kerosene. That was stupid, I thought, for naturally the maids would tattle—but Karsten said no, cooks never tattled.
I did nothing but spy around in all the woodsheds and lofts I could get into for things to burn. You see, we couldn’t expect to get hold of old boats as the people on the islands did. A few bits of board I found, of course, but nothing of any account.
Andreas was the handiest person you can imagine, swift as a chamois and very strong. Every day he, with dirty bare legs, appeared in our hall and asked if there was something for him to carry up to “Sahara,” for that was his business; but usually there was nothing.
Day after day went by, and still the store of fuel up in “Sahara” was not very big. Then one day my eyes fell on an old bedstead that stood in Mrs. Petersen’s woodshed. It was very dirty and had stood there a long time, surely half a year.
I could not get that bedstead out of my mind. Mrs. Petersen couldn’t care the least bit about it, since it had stood in the woodshed so long. It was very old, and painted red, and would burn gloriously. Probably Mrs. Petersen would only be thankful if we took it, dirty as it was, out of her way.
I consulted with Andreas and Karsten. “Oh, yes, we’ll take it,” said Andreas. I rather think Andreas would have taken the two beds out of his house, if he could, so as to have something to burn.
“If Mrs. Petersen were only not so severe, we might ask her for the bed,” said Karsten. Karsten always says people are “severe” when they are cross or angry.
No, ask Mrs. Petersen for the bed we dared not, that was sure. But we couldn’t have a bonfire without fuel, so if you’ll believe it, we took the old bedstead one evening without so much as saying “by your leave” to any one.
Andreas took it apart and carried it all up to “Sahara” as if it were a feather!
My, but that would make a grand bonfire!
First the bedstead, then a big butter-firkin filled with heather on top of it, and in the firkin we fixed a tall pole with an enormous bunch of heather soaked in kerosene tied on its top.
Now people needn’t plume themselves on their grand bonfires out on the island, for our bonfire would be seen as far away as Jomfruland, that was certain.
The weather wasn’t very good that St. John’s Night. It had been dingy and gray all day, getting ready to rain; and that was good surely, for we hadn’t had rain for four weeks and the grass was stiff and yellow and the heather as dry as tinder over the whole hill.
But since the rain had waited so long, it might as well wait until St. John’s Night was over. That is what I thought then, at any rate.
The whole afternoon we stayed up there on the hill, arranging and improving our pile of fuel, so that everything should be perfect for the evening. From that height we could see over the whole town, into the streets and courtyards. Men looked about as big as pins, and children looked like pinheads; yet we knew every pin and pinhead we saw down there. We saw the boys rowing out to the islands; and far beyond the islands we could see Skagerak, gray and billowy, with tiny white-capped waves, and with heavy gray air lying above its waters.
O dear, O dear! How the time dragged before it grew dark that evening! At last we could wait no longer but lighted our bonfire before any others were lighted.
The bunch of heather at the top of the pole blazed up like a great bouquet of fire. It looked perfectly magnificent, really.
There! Now Mrs. Petersen’s bedstead had caught. Hurrah! What fun! Greatest fun in the world!
We danced and skipped and shouted, “Hurrah!” looking towards the town all the time to see whether any one noticed our splendid bonfire. Hurrah! Hurrah!
The wind began to blow,—to blow very hard. Sparks flew all over the hill. We could not stand in the lee of the bonfire, for it would have been like standing in a sea of flame.
Well, if the townsfolk didn’t see that fire now, it must be that they had no eyes in their heads. Andreas turned somersaults in the heather. Hurrah! Hurrah!
But all at once I noticed some little flames springing up here and there.
“The heather is on fire!” I shouted.
“Hurrah!” shouted Andreas and Karsten in high glee.
But at that moment something seemed to tighten in my chest. I was afraid with a great sudden fear.
“Now all that will be a St. John’s Night bonfire,” said Karsten gleefully, pointing towards the moor.
“Are you crazy? Put it out! Only put it out!” I shouted.
We danced and skipped and shouted, “Hurrah!”
The whole hill was covered with heather as far as one could see, heather as dry as tinder from the long drought. Suppose it should all get on fire! I rushed forward, tramped in the burning heather and beat it with a stick.
“Help me put it out! Help me put it out!” I cried. The boys were frightened, too, now, and we all worked frantically; but the sparks showered down faster and faster and the fire seemed to blaze up everywhere at the same instant.
It was terrible. Down in the streets people stopped and looked up and some began to run. I was ready to throw myself into the burning heather, so terrified was I. And the wind howled and blew and swarms of sparks danced about in all directions.
Suppose the whole moor should take fire,—and perhaps the whole world be burnt up—it would all be our fault. The bonfire crackled and blazed against the dark sky and the flames hissed in the heather.
Those moments I cannot write about. I don’t believe I thought of anything, I was so overwhelmed by fear.
I tramped, I shrieked, I ran right into the midst of the burning heather and shouted I don’t know what.
Over the moor some people came running swiftly, big, smoke-begrimed men, Constable Midsen, Alexander Brygga, Herman Dilt, and many, many others.
“What lawlessness and foolery is this?” shouted Constable Midsen. “There is hard punishment, and fines besides, for such doings. Help here, fellows. Quick!”
The whole of our beautiful bonfire was thrown down before you could count three, tramped on and put out, Constable Midsen giving the orders.
It seems to me I can hear his voice yet, mingled with the noisy blasts of the wind over the dark moor where the fire still crackled and snapped in the heather.
And it was all our fault! Such hard work as we had had, and such grand fun as we had expected to have! It would be best for me to run away at once, I thought; but no, it would be a shame to do that. Midsen held Karsten and Andreas as in a vise so that they should not run away; and it was just as much my fault as theirs.
I sat on a stone and cried hard; Andreas choked and cried and dried his eyes on his jacket-sleeves, first one and then the other; but Karsten fairly bellowed—his way of crying.
The men kept on tearing up the heather so as to stop the fire, and scolding us constantly. I wonder whether you can possibly imagine how perfectly horrid it was. I shall never again have a bonfire of my own, if I live to be a hundred years old.
Suddenly I felt a raindrop—then another and another—and then it began to pour.
“Well, you may thank the Lord for His merciful judgment,” said Midsen. “Now the fire will be put out by the rain.”
And what do you think? I cried harder than ever then for joy; and in my heart I thanked God over and over that He had let the rain come just at that time.
When the fire was entirely out and we trudged down the hill, it was almost pitch-dark; water trickled from my clothes, my eyes smarted from the smoke, my hands were scorched, but the worst was, I was unspeakably afraid of what Father would say.
What he said and what came afterward, I won’t tell of in detail for it was altogether too horrid. I was dreadfully, dreadfully sorry I had not asked Mother about having a bonfire, I can tell you.
Father had to pay Mrs. Petersen for her old bedstead. What do you think of that! Probably he had to pay extra for the dirt on it.
And yet, she was so “severe,” as Karsten would say, that she all but chased me out of her house with a broom when I went to beg her pardon.
I had to do that. Father said I must.
Ugh! But of course it was wrong to take her bedstead.