FOOTNOTES:
[4] National Song of Norway. (“Yes, we love this land.”)
XIII
A DAY AT SCHOOL
Sometimes it is rather pleasant to go to school; a little tedious, oh yes, but often jolly good fun.
What makes it horrid is that one has to go to school in all kinds of weather. When there is sunshine and such fresh, crisp, clear air that it tingles through your whole body even to your finger-tips, and you have to go to school and sit there three, four, five hours, then I really think it is disgusting. Yes, I allow myself to say that then it truly is disgusting.
But when there is a drizzling rain and I know my lessons, it is not so bad to go to school, after all. I almost always know my lessons, for that matter. When I study them twice over and then shut my eyes and hear myself, I know them. When there is something very difficult in our “History of the World,” such as the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly, the Representative Assembly, and all that, why, then I have to study the lesson over three times.
I am at the head of the class, and always have been, as far back as I can remember. So the other girls plague me to translate for them till I am often bored. I scarcely get inside the class-room door in the mornings before they rush at me, each with her book in her hand, and draw me to a window or a corner to translate the German lesson or the English lesson for them.
There is only one girl that I am afraid might get above me in the class and take my place away from me. That is Anna Brynildsen. From the moment she came into the school, and being a new pupil was put at the foot of the class, I have been afraid of her, because people said she was frightfully clever. She has already crept up so that her seat is the second from the head.
There is something awfully exasperating to me about Anna Brynildsen. I don’t like her looks, I don’t like her clothes or anything. Antoinette Wium says I’d like her better if she weren’t so clever. Well, I don’t like the glib way she recites, as if everything were as easy as A B C; and that self-satisfied look she wears is enough to exasperate any one, I think. She almost never talks but when she does say anything, every word is so sensible that she might as well be eighty years old.
Ugh! that Anna Brynildsen!
Now I will tell you how a day at school goes with us. One only time in all my life have I cheated at school, and it is that particular day I am going to tell about.
I must begin at the beginning, and that is old Ingeborg who cleans the schoolroom, wipes up the dust, puts wood in the stove, and so on. But old Ingeborg is so old that she can’t see the dust, and when we come to school it is lying thick everywhere. That is why I began to do the dusting.
In the first hour, we always have a student from a Normal School, Mr. Bu, as teacher. Did you ever hear such a name? But he is not half bad, Mr. Bu; he is exceedingly kind. You see, very often I don’t get the dusting and arranging done in time, but he doesn’t say anything if I, once in a while, keep on dusting after the lesson begins.
“It is absolutely necessary, Mr. Bu,” I say.
And it really is. All the desks, the window-sills, the maps, even up on the platform around Mr. Bu’s elbows on his desk, I have to dust. It was only once I did that, however.
At recess I clean the ink-wells. I think it is fun to do such things. Sometimes I dust the ledges of the logs that make the walls, so that the dusting shall last as long as possible; for it is much pleasanter to go about dusting than to sit still at your desk.
Well, it was one summer day just before vacation. Such sunshine you never saw. The sea was one mass of sparkles; two or three mackerel boats lay outside the islands. Oh, to row out there now, to sit in the boat and dabble in the blue-green water, to land on Marcussen’s Island, and run up on the hill there and shout and play and enjoy yourself!
But no. I must go to school; and I didn’t know a word of my lesson which was about Olaf Kyrre. I had been certain the evening before that I should have time to study my “History of Norway” in the morning; but let me tell you, it isn’t safe to depend on time ahead that way. There wasn’t a minute. I had to dash down the hill through the dean’s garden to get to school in time, and even then I only just got there before the bell rang.
The dust lay thick everywhere. It was highly necessary for me to be on hand, that was evident. But would you believe it? Antoinette Wium had taken it upon herself to begin to put the room in order and manage things; but she soon found out her mistake.
“No, Miss,” said I. “Be so good as to sit down. It is I who shall do this. Do you suppose Mr. Bu wants so much confusion here? Be so good as to take your seat and keep quiet.”
So Antoinette had to go back to her desk. Mr. Bu said nothing but I could see plainly that he agreed with me. Of course there should be order and quiet in the class-room.
Mr. Bu is rather queer, however. When the weather is fine, he leans out of the window the whole lesson hour, asks the questions out in the air and we answer from where we sit, back in the room. We get awfully lively, you may be sure, but when there is too much noise behind him, he comes in from the window, very angry.
“You’ll get marked for this; you’ll get marked for such behavior,” he says, shaking his forefinger at us and glaring fiercely around the class-room. But we know very well that he won’t give us any marks, for Mr. Bu is after all very easy-going.
Antoinette Wium was highly offended with me because I would not allow her to attend to the class-room. While Mr. Bu was hanging out of the window, a ball of paper hit me suddenly on the head. On the inside of the paper was written:
“There ought to be a limit to self-conceit as well as to other things. You are the most conceited person in the whole world, Inger Johanne High-and-Mighty. Mother says so, too.”
Pooh! That fat Mrs. Wium who goes through the streets with her market-basket, and the neck of her dress unfastened! As if I cared the least bit for her. I wrote a note in reply immediately:
“Whether your mother likes me or not is for me a bagatelle.”
I really must ask if you don’t think that that was well said?
The bell rang, Mr. Bu came in from the window, assigned our new lesson and the class was dismissed.
Well, that was good. In this recess I must learn what I could about Olaf Kyrre, for I didn’t know the least speck about him. But there was no studying for me, I assure you, for the instant Mr. Bu shut the door, Antoinette came at me, angry as could be because I had called her mother a bagatelle, she said.
“It may easily be that your mother is a bagatelle,” said I. “But I never called her that.”
“Yes, you did,” said Antoinette.
“No, I didn’t,” said I.
We kept on disputing that way the whole recess. I held my “History of Norway” in my hand but didn’t get a chance to see a word in it.
Pshaw! Now we must have arithmetic. There stood Mr. Holmesland at the door.
“Mental arithmetic! Mental arithmetic!” shouted the class. “Let us have mental arithmetic.”
Mr. Holmesland is a stout man with sleepy-looking eyes and a reddish beard. He said never a word, but walked up to his desk and sat down with his hand under his cheek as usual.
“Written arithmetic,” he said emphatically when he was well settled.
“Oh, no, Mr. Holmesland! Mental arithmetic, mental——”
“When I was outside the door,” said Mr. Holmesland, “I thought that we should have mental arithmetic to-day, but since you shouted and screamed so, I decided that you should not have it.”
A grumbling murmur came from all the desks.
“Written arithmetic,” said Mr. Holmesland again. His water-blue eyes looked as if they would shut any minute.
As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely the same whether it is mental or written arithmetic, for I am equally poor in both.
Isn’t it remarkable that I cannot do anything with numbers? Just think, I believe it would be perfectly impossible for me to do a “rule of three” example correctly! How I shall manage when I come to higher mathematics I can’t imagine, especially if we have Mr. Holmesland. He only looks heavily down at you and lets it go, and one can’t learn a great deal that way. At any rate I can’t, I’m sure of that. But the most elaborate and difficult problems in arithmetic are just “rat for cat” to Anna Brynildsen. She gets every one correct to the last dot. That’s the kind of head she has.
When she goes up to Mr. Holmesland’s desk, gets “Correct” on all her examples, and comes down again with that unspeakably self-satisfied look of hers, she is so exasperating to me that I feel like flying right at her and knocking her over. My! Suppose I should do it some day!
I worked out four examples that hour. One I really thought was right, but the others I had no hope of.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Mr. Holmesland, as he drew a heavy mark through them all.
Pshaw!
“You are most remarkably incapable as an arithmetician,” said Mr. Holmesland. “I believe if any one asked you how many eyes you had, you would make a mistake in counting them.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the pupils at their desks, Anna Brynildsen with them—she who seldom laughs at anything. She laughed so exasperatingly, too, keeping her mouth tight shut, and not making any sound except “h’m, h’m, h’m.”
At last the bell rang and I rushed around opening windows. Fresh air I must have.
Anna Brynildsen took up her lunch-box and began to eat her sandwiches, made with sausage. She spends the whole recess eating.
This was the time to study my history lesson; but as I threw open the farthest window, the one that looks out on a little grassy place, I suddenly had an irresistible desire to jump out into that green grass. Although our class-room is on the first floor, it is quite far from the ground, because the foundation of the building is so high. Massa wanted to jump out, too, so out we went, I with my history book in my hand. Thump, thump! It was lots of fun. Other girls jumped out after us, thump, thump, thump!
Anna Brynildsen was the only one of the class who didn’t jump out. She stood at the window eating her bread and sausage.
We stormed back into the room, out of the window again, every one of us. What uproarious fun we had!
And then, my gracious, if recess wasn’t over!
Ugh! Olaf Kyrre. I read hastily as we went into the class-room. Mr. Juul, who teaches our history class, was already there. Such a beautiful nose as he has! It could be a model for a sculptor, it is so finely shaped.
Mr. Juul swung himself up to his chair on the platform.
“Close the windows,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Juul! Let us have one open; just one!”
“Close the windows, I say.”
Pshaw! We have to sit as if in a box with the lid on when Mr. Juul has the class.
Now for the lesson. How in the world should I get along when I didn’t know anything at all about him,—that bothersome old Olaf Kyrre.
I had a faint hope that Mr. Juul might forget to call on me. I wouldn’t even look at him for fear that might remind him of me; and I made myself as small as possible and sat as still as a stone.
“Kima Pirk, please begin.”
Kima stood up and began to rattle off something. She almost never knows the lesson, but when she is called upon to recite, she swallows and mutters and stutters and uses her mouth so queerly that it is almost impossible to understand anything she says.
For once, I was glad to hear her. Mr. Juul always calls on us in regular order, and since he had begun with Kima, who sat at the farthest end of the class from me, I should escape.
Oh, what a relief!—that I should not be called upon to recite.
Kima sputtered and stammered. Meanwhile I made a beautiful chicken out of paper, under my desk.
“What kind of a king was Olaf Kyrre?—Inger Johanne.”
I jumped up.
“He was—he was very bloodthirsty.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, no,—he was very brave—only a little bloodthirsty.”
Mr. Juul went over to the window to get himself a glass of water.
Quick as a flash, I opened my history, placing another book so as to hide it. When Mr. Juul was in his seat again, I read a whole half page as if I knew it by rote.
I cast a glance at Mr. Juul. He was looking intently at me with those brown eyes of his.
“Inger Johanne! If I had not seen it myself, I should never have believed it, never—that you would cheat!”
“Inger Johanne cheated?” “Inger Johanne?” “Cheated?” different voices called in loud whispers from the desks as all the class turned and stretched their necks to look at me.
Oh, how sorry, how sorry I was! How I wished I had not done it. Sorry, ashamed, disgraced!
“You may go out into the hall, Inger Johanne, and stay there the rest of the hour,” said Mr. Juul in a deep voice.
I went out, every one in the class still staring at me.
I had been sent out into the hall before, but that was because I had been too lively; never for cheating. Never in my life for cheating. Oh, what a disgrace! What a disgrace! It was the very worst thing I could have done. What would Father say when he saw the marks in my report book? For I should surely be marked; I saw that by Mr. Juul’s manner. Oh, I should never in the world be happy again, never! How could I be?
I don’t know whether any of you ever stood out in the hall a whole hour, thinking of the marks you would get and the scoldings. Well, it is not at all comfortable. As the time dragged on, I could think of nothing to do but to reach up as far as I could on the walls and destroy the spider webs, setting free the captured flies that hung in the webs, buzzing.
At last the hour came to an end. All the class looked hard at me when I went back into the room. No one said anything, they only stared.
“Pooh!” said I, tossing my head and pretending there was nothing the matter; but I had to own to myself that it was frightfully embarrassing.
I would not go out at recess; no, not for anything would I go out. I sat at my desk the whole time and sketched pen-and-ink heads on a new blotting-paper. I felt as if I should never play any more, I was so disgusted with myself. Oh, no one should ever, ever cheat!
How remorseful I was, and how miserable, as I sat there alone that recess, while the girls were chattering and laughing and having a jolly time together out-of-doors!
During the last two hours of school we have Norwegian composition with the school principal. We had written compositions upon “Our Country’s Productions,” and they were to be returned to us on this day. Usually the hours with the principal are the pleasantest any one could have, but to-day everything was horrid for me.
Mr. Juul had, of course, told him that I had been cheating. I scarcely dared look at him.
When the lesson time came to an end, the principal said, “Inger Johanne, come with me to my office.”
What he said to me in there I shall never tell. It made me terribly unhappy and I cried and cried. Never, oh! never in my life would I cheat again. Probably the principal was sure of that, too, because he did not put any bad mark in my report-book.
As soon as I got home, however, I told Mother what I had done, for everything is easier to bear, somehow, no matter what it is, if I only tell Mother.
XIV
THE TIME I NEARLY DROWNED
Oh yes—that time——
In reality, this story isn’t much to my credit, but you shall hear it nevertheless.
You ought to see how many queer persons there are in our town. I mean persons who are not exactly right in their minds, but who are allowed to go about because they never do any harm. I used to think it was great fun to run after them and tease them, but I never do that any more; and the reason I do not is just what I am going to tell you about.
Well, Mrs. Lennertsen is one of these queer persons. She is awfully dressy, wears a French shawl that trails on the ground and carries a blue silk parasol with a jointed handle so that it can be turned at different angles. When any one greets her, she stands stockstill and makes a grand curtsey such as we learn at dancing-school. She is so old that there are criss-cross wrinkles all over her face.
With every single ship that comes in Mrs. Lennertsen expects seven barrels of gold, neither more nor less. Under her shawl she carries a whip and is not at all slow in bringing it out to use if any one teases her; and she is awfully comical then. But I never tease her any more, I really don’t.
Well, then there is Jens Julsen, with a humpy nose such as the ancient kings of Oldenborg had. He wears a worn-out silk hat and sings songs, one after the other, incessantly. After each song he says, “Finis,” and immediately starts a new one.
But never mind about Jens Julsen now. Evan “Henny-Penny” (I don’t know his real last name) is the one this story is about. He is small and rosy-cheeked and wears a gray coat that reaches down to his shoes; and he carries a big staff that is much longer than himself. It is really a big, stout fence rail, and you can understand what a long way he can reach and hit with that. He was once a school-teacher, but now he lives at the old yellow poorhouse, although he usually spends the whole day on the wharf. There is no one that all of us children have been so horrid to as to Evan Henny-Penny.
Whenever he showed himself at the street corner we were after him, shouting, teasing, and snatching at his coat. The rough boys from the Point may have treated him shamefully, but among the children in our part of the town, I believe I was the worst.
Every single day I thought of some new way to tease him. Of course, at that time, it seemed mighty good fun; now it makes me loathe myself to think how I plagued him, for if it had not been for that queer little Evan——
It was one afternoon in October. The weather was just the kind that I like so much, a strong gale blowing from the sea, high tide washing over the wharf, and a rumbling, roaring sound like thunder in the air. The big ash-trees near the church writhed and creaked and groaned; the weather-vane turned round and round, squeaking every minute. All that blowing and stir and noise everywhere suits me exactly. I just love it.
But I could never get any of my friends to enjoy it with me.
“Ugh! No.—Are you going out in such weather?” they say when I ask them to go. “Ugh! Such frightful weather.”
So I go alone, up on the hills, or down on the wharf, or anywhere.
That day, too, I was alone. I had gone to the big ice-house at South Bay, because some one had said that a big ship was adrift out there and I wanted to see it. But, if you please, that was all bosh—there was neither ship nor anything else worth looking at in South Bay.
When I go off alone that way I think of tremendously entertaining things. I think of families with ever so many children and the jolly times they have. I know how all the people I invent look, and what they say, and what they do; and they travel over the whole wide world. I decide everything for them. I am queen over them all. To invent this way is the most entertaining thing in the world. Sometimes I tell Karen and Mina about it, but I can see plainly that they don’t understand at all what I mean.
“Do you know these people?” asked Karen once.
“No, I just invent them, you know.”
“Can there be any fun in that?” sniffed Karen, scornfully. Since then I never talk about what I think of when I am alone.
I remember well that as I walked to the icehouse at South Bay that afternoon I made up a story about two little girls who traveled alone all the way to Egypt to visit an awfully rich uncle.
Since there was no ship or anything interesting to be seen, I sat down on the edge of the wharf, thinking it would be fun to see whether the waves would dash high enough to wet my legs if I stretched them far down. One wave after another came rolling in, black but topped with white foam. Whack!—splash!—one struck against the wharf. No, it did not reach me. Now another wave,—an enormous one—but that did not reach me either.
Some one came pattering along behind me. I turned around and saw Evan Henny-Penny with his long staff.
“Is that you, Henny-Penny?” I called.
“You’ll fall into the water if you sit there,” said Evan.
“Shall I really, Henny-Penny?”
He came nearer, right to where I was sitting. I got up hastily. I am not in the least afraid of Evan, but for all that, it made me feel queer to have him come so close to me with that long staff of his.
As you can well understand, I hadn’t a clear conscience with regard to Evan, so horrid as I had always been to him with my teasing and calling him names.
When I had run a few steps away from him, I got hold of a little stick and began to tease him. I danced round and round him, poked him with the stick and sang a nonsense song that always made him frightfully angry:
“Anna Pelanna with light blue beard,
If you live till summer
You’ll lay an egg,
You’ll lay an egg——”
“If I once get hold of you, you young villain,” said Evan Henny-Penny.
He tried to hit me with his stick, time after time, while I kept on dancing round and round him and chanting, “You’ll lay an egg. You’ll lay——”
Without knowing it, I had danced to the very edge of the wharf and—splash! over I went, down into the black water.
Never to my dying day shall I forget that moment. To fall and fall, to feel the ice-cold water covering me, nothing to catch hold of, knowing myself sinking—— The water seemed to freeze my very heart. I tried to scream, but could not; the water thundered in my ears. I clutched with both hands—everything failed me—only ice-cold water—I sank—sank——
I came up again. Oh, there was the wharf! I gave a piercing shriek, then—what was that? Something was let down from the wharf, something that moved. I grabbed it, and recognized it as Evan Henny-Penny’s staff. Keeping tight hold with both hands, I felt the staff pulled from above. How little Evan managed it, I can’t understand. People who heard about it afterward said it was a perfect miracle, but up to the wharf he drew me, till I could catch hold of the edge. Then he grasped my arms, pulled and pulled with all his might, and there I was on the wharf.
“Oh, Evan—Evan! Don’t be angry, Evan,” were the first words I said.
“I got you up,” said Evan, with a sly smile. “You screamed horribly there by the wharf.”
“Come home with me, Evan,” I said. “Please do.”
I felt the staff pulled from above.
I felt that I must have him go home with me or I couldn’t thank him enough.
“Not a bit of it. You needn’t think I’ll do that,” answered Evan Henny-Penny.
So I had to run home alone, in my dripping clothes. My teeth chattered, I was so cold. I ran all the way, and right up-stairs to Gunhild, who put me to bed and sent some one to call Mother.
Oh, how I cried when I got to bed—because it was Evan Henny-Penny who had saved me; Evan, whom I had teased and been so horrid to, always, always!
“Oh, Mother, Mother! You must give Evan a lot to eat—lots of good things!”
“Yes, child, you may be sure I shall; but you must beg his pardon for behaving so outrageously to him, Inger Johanne; and you must never tease him or any other such poor creatures again.”
Since that October afternoon Evan has had dinner at our house every single day. When we have anything especially good, I am glad for his sake. I always look out that the best isn’t all eaten up at our table, but that Evan, out in the kitchen, gets a good big portion.
And now I never tease any of them any more, never,—Mrs. Lennertsen, Jens Julsen, or Evan; and if anybody else attempts it when I am around, I put an end to it pretty quickly, you may depend upon that. I run after a policeman immediately. Not after Mr. Weiby, who would only say, “Well, well. Off with you!” but after Mr. Skarnes, who takes them by the neck and strikes out with his club. Of course, all the children are terribly afraid of him, so teasing is getting out of fashion in our town, I am happy to say.
XV
SURPRISING THE CLOCKMAKER
Never in my life have I liked Clockmaker Krause, and for that I have three good reasons. The first is that he never bows to me, although Consul Gjertz and the Chief of Police take off their hats to me when I curtsey—and he also might do as much as that, I think.
The second reason is that I can’t bear the way he carries himself when he walks. Some persons stoop forward, but Clockmaker Krause leans over back. From his heels to the top of his head, his figure makes a slanting line backward just like the mast of a sailboat in a heavy sea. He carries himself that way just because he thinks himself of so much consequence.
The third reason for my not liking him is that he has nailed some boards together in the fence around his yard, so that we can’t run through that short way when the clock says ten minutes to nine and we are rushing to school in a hurry. It is really awfully mean of Clockmaker Krause to do that, for it can’t hurt him a mite if we run through his yard two or three times a day.
Clockmaker Krause is never out except in the evening, when there is moonlight; and he never walks farther than from his own steps to the deacon’s fence—from the deacon’s fence to his own steps;—that’s the way he keeps on,—and he looks like a thin slanting streak in the moonlight.
I really believe it was Teresa Billington’s fault that the fence was nailed together. Yes, I’m sure we can thank her for that. Teresa is housekeeper for Clockmaker Krause, and she is even more exasperating to me than he is. She is fat and pale and the expression of her face never changes; and when people are consequential like Krause and with such a set face as Teresa’s, I call it exasperating. She has nothing to feel high and mighty about. She is not from our town.
Although her expression is so set, I made her change it once, at any rate. It was one summer evening when I was allowed to ride the truckman’s horse home. This man lived a little outside of the town; and there were many persons on the road taking a walk in the twilight. As I rode along, I suddenly saw Teresa Billington with her red parasol and her disgustingly haughty air. “Now I’ll just see if I can’t make that set expression change,” I thought, and with that I turned the big horse towards her and rode right close to her.
Goodness gracious! You may well believe that her face took on a different look. The red parasol dropped into the road, Teresa Billington opened her mouth wide and shrieked and stretched her arms up against the steep hillside. It was impossible for her to go anywhere, you see, for the bank was straight up and down like a wall. But I very calmly turned the horse and rode on my way.
Another time that Teresa was angry with me was about the kittens, but that time I was innocent. It was Mrs. Pussy’s fault. Our dear delightful Mrs. Pussy had four little kittens and I put them in a basket in our attic. It was a fine basket, beautifully trimmed with lace and with a doll’s blanket in the bottom of it; but, only think! Mrs. Pussy wouldn’t stay there.
Clockmaker Krause lives a little way from us, back on the hill. In his yard there is a tumble-down woodshed and in its attic, yes, there, if you please, was where Mrs. Pussy wanted to keep her kittens. One by one she carried them, holding them by the neck, from that lace-trimmed basket in our attic, up the hill and into the loft of that rickety woodshed of Krause’s. Naturally I followed her, and, sure enough, on a heap of rags in a corner lay Mrs. Pussy purring, with all the four black, silky-soft kittens scrambling over her.
The very minute I got up there Teresa Billington came also.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice quivering, for she was in a regular rage.
“I am just taking our kittens away,” I said, gathering them up in my apron.
“Such alley-cats that go into other folks’ houses—it would serve them right if they had their heads chopped off,” said Teresa. “And such gad-about children, too,” she shouted down the ladder after me. “Children that grow up to be nothing but nuisances to other folks.”
Well, later came the time that I planned the surprise for Clockmaker Krause. One moonlight night he was walking up and down the street as usual. Karen and I went past him again and again and curtsied every time, but he looked only at the moon. Then we took a great notion to play some joke on him; and do you know what we did?
The clocks in his shop had struck seven almost at one and the same instant. Some boomed slowly in deep muffled tones, some rang delicate quick strokes. It sounded like chimes when all his clocks were striking.
The clockmaker had just gone away from his steps, and we knew that there was no one in the shop when he took these little walks.
“I’m going to run in and move the hands of all the clocks around to eight,” said I. “So the next time Krause comes to his shop door, they will strike again. My! What a surprise it will be for him, won’t it?”
Karen was to stand outside and whistle through her fingers if Krause came down the street sooner than we expected.
I dashed up the high flight of stone steps into the shop and shoved the hands quickly around on five clocks. Just then Karen whistled furiously through her fingers—right under the window—and I heard Krause on the stone steps.
Never shall I forget my fright. I ducked down behind the counter in the darkest corner, and there I lay. Sin brought its own punishment that time, I can tell you, for it was horrible lying there expecting every minute to be discovered. Krause busied himself with something over on a table; then two of the clocks whose hands I had moved began to strike, and the strokes rang out sharp and clear in the stillness. Krause turned hastily around.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed aloud. Another clock began to strike, then another and another. I can’t describe how I felt as I lay there and heard them.
Krause could scarcely believe his own ears.
“What in the world is the matter?” he exclaimed. “The clocks are all striking eight, five minutes after they have struck seven!”
Just then Karen whistled again under the window.
“It’s those rascally young ones who have been doing mischief here!” shouted Krause suddenly, and he rushed headlong out-of-doors.
That was my salvation; for Krause naturally thought that whoever had meddled with his clocks was out in the street. He had no idea that I was lying behind his counter.
When he had dashed out, it didn’t take me long to get out either, I can tell you! Down the stone steps in two hops, up the street and around Mrs. Milberg’s corner; and there I was—safe. Karen came breathlessly the other way through Miss Fretteland’s garden. Krause had not seen her, either, and joyful indeed were we at our escape.
A little later we, with a most innocent air, walked up and down past Clockmaker Krause, who stood in his doorway watching. But would you believe it? I was found out after all! Now you shall hear.
The next morning when I was on my way to school, Teresa stood at the clockmaker’s door.
“Are not these yellow gloves yours?” she asked.
Yes, of course they were mine. They were deep yellow and very stylish, and I made a great display of them whenever I had them on.
“Well, well. They are yours, are they? They lay on the floor in the shop, so perhaps you know who it was went in there and ruined all the clocks for Krause.”
“Ruined them?” I said aghast, looking up at Teresa in real fright.
“Krause, Krause!” called Teresa. “Come out here.”
But I dared not stay any longer to talk with Teresa, for it was late and I must hurry to school; so I took to my heels and ran away, not sorry to avoid meeting the clockmaker.
At school I felt all the time that there was something weighing upon me, something disagreeable. Nothing was pleasant. I got “one” on my composition about “Love of Country,” but even that did not cheer me. What Teresa had said,—that I had ruined the clocks,—was too dreadful.
Suppose Krause said I must pay for those five big clocks! Ugh! I was so upset that my heart was in my mouth all day.
By now Krause had probably been up to see Father. For a moment I thought I would not go home that day; I would go up on the hill and eat frozen whortleberries for dinner,—or stay down on the wharf all day and sleep in our old barn, and never go home any more,—or go off in a steamship. Oh, what should I do? What should I do?
When school was over I went around by the wharf to drag out the time. Every one had gone home to dinner but myself and Constable Stiksrud, and it was absolutely still over the whole market-place. A dog barked up by the corner and Stiksrud turned around quickly with an angry face. Everything is to be very quiet and orderly at the market-place in our town, you see.
“Aren’t you going home to your dinner?” asked Stiksrud, at last. So of course I had to go.
As soon as I got home I had a suspicion that they knew what I had done. There was a heavy feeling in the air at the dinner table. Everybody was so silent—so silent! I ate all the soup from my plate—something I seldom do. I didn’t believe Father was silent because he knew about the clocks, for he always keeps still at meals; but Mother usually talks, and to-day there wasn’t a word breathed from behind the soup tureen.
After we had finished dinner, the blow came. Mother called me into the pantry.
“Clockmaker Krause’s housekeeper has been up here, Inger Johanne. You have been doing something wrong again, haven’t you?”
“No, Mother—I don’t believe I ruined the clocks—I only—I only shoved the hands around—very quickly, you know——”
“Shoved the hands, you say?”
“Yes—just for fun, Mother—don’t be angry—just so that the clocks should strike again—Krause would be so surprised.”
Mother looked thoughtfully out of the pantry window.
“Well, we shall have to see about finding a way out of all this; perhaps we ought to send you to boarding-school in Germany, for you are really as wild as the worst boy.”
“No, no, Mother. Don’t send me away—I’ll never think of any more mischief—I’ll be so good——”
“The heart is good enough,” said Mother, opening the pantry door. “But, my dear Inger Johanne, don’t let me hear any more complaints about you.”
Ugh! They always threaten me with these horrid boarding-schools, where I should learn to behave properly. When I have done something that is a little bad, then I am to go to boarding-school in Sondfjord, but when I have been perfectly wild, as Mother calls it—then I am to go to Germany or to Pommeren, wherever that is.
However, none of the clocks were damaged at all. Teresa had only said they were ruined to frighten me. But just think! I never got my yellow gloves back. Teresa kept them and I couldn’t bear to ask her for them.
Well, that’s the way I surprised Clockmaker Krause, and I got more trouble than fun out of it. However, I shall never curtsey to him any more; he may depend upon that.
XVI
GHOSTS
All the people in the town think that our house is haunted. They say that old Customs Officer Borgen, who used to own the house and who has been dead for many, many years is the ghost that haunts it.
The house is awfully old, with a tremendously long sloping roof, a big garret, lots of closets and poke-holes under the eaves, and a pitch-dark hall with unexpected steps, over which people who don’t know about them tumble head over heels.
Above the big garret, in the high peak of the roof, there are two lofts, one above the other; and it is in the topmost loft that the old customs officer walks about and busies himself; at least, so people say.
“V-s-s-s,” sounds from up there, and a little while after, “Bum, bum, bum.” It may be the wind in under the roof-tiles that says, “V-s-s-s,” but no one can explain the “Bum, bum, bum.” That must be the customs officer, you see.
The maids are always afraid to go to the uppermost loft after dark, and really it isn’t pleasant to go up there when it is light, either. It seems so queer, somehow, as if some one stood behind you all the time who would grab hold of your dress or your braids. Karsten is just as afraid as I am, but he will never own it; he just brags.
“Pooh! It’s nothing. Girls and women are afraid of everything. Well, here’s the boy so strong that he could and would throttle seven customs officers, if necessary.”
Ugh! Karsten has grown so conceited lately that he is beyond everything. He is always saying that I am nothing but a girl, but that he is a boy, he is. (Oh, you wait, Karsten Cocky-cub; you’ll get paid for such talk, depend upon it.)
The thought of the customs officer wouldn’t bother me much if I didn’t need now and then to go into the top loft, but I do need to, you see. Up there in one corner lies a great heap of papers that old Mr. Borgen left in the house, stiff yellow papers with accounts on them. Whenever Karsten and I want any paper,—and that is almost every day, you know,—we are allowed to take what we need from that heap.
Mother doesn’t like us to bring too much of the old dusty paper down at one time, and that’s why I have to go up often for it. But I go like the wind up and back again. Not that I have ever seen old Mr. Borgen there, but it isn’t pleasant to think that he rambles around the loft in his felt shoes and with a shade over his eyes. That’s the way he looks, people say.
One evening Father and Mother were going out to a party, and Karsten and I would be alone at home, except that I was to have Massa and Mina to supper. The weather was perfectly horrid that night. The wind wrestled with the old maple-trees around the house, pulled and tugged at them till they creaked. The branches of the pear-tree outside the drawing-room windows swayed to and fro and struck against the panes.
We had been romping at a great rate all the afternoon before dark, and had danced so hard that the drawing-room floor shook, and Ingeborg, the cook, had come up from the basement to know whether we were going to tear the house down. But we didn’t bother ourselves about what she said, for she is always fussy.
Later we teased Karsten, chasing him through all the rooms, the parlor, the little room, dining-room, living-room and out through the kitchen; and we kept shouting at him:
“Karsten Cocky-Cub,
In a half butter-tub.”
The boys at school call him that, and it always makes him furious. His white hair was standing straight up, his face was fiery red. Suddenly he turned and sprang towards us, waving a piece of knotted rope which he said was a Russian “knout.” Massa, Mina, and I screeched like locomotive whistles, hid behind doors and shrieked again in terror when Karsten caught us.
Just then Ingeborg appeared again and said in her scolding voice, “Now, children, don’t you know you shouldn’t race and romp like this so late in the evening, and here in this house where it isn’t safe, and in such weather?”
“Look out for the customs officer, Ingeborg; he’ll soon be here,” shouted Karsten.
Ingeborg shook her fist at him. “Don’t talk ugly, boy; he may come before you think.”
I don’t know why it was, but suddenly I lost all desire for noisy fun. I proposed that we go into the drawing-room again. Great, broken clouds hurried over the sky, the moon shone out now and then and gleamed into the room, bright and clear between the leafless, swaying branches.
I should much rather have had the lamps lighted, but since the others preferred sitting in the dark I said nothing. We packed ourselves together on a sofa in a corner. The moon had gone behind a cloud now, the branches kept tapping, tapping, the big room was perfectly dark and had grown cold, too.
“Let’s tell ghost-stories,” suggested Massa. “I suppose you have heard about Eyvind who met a ghost in the churchyard once.”
“Oh, Massa! don’t tell that. I’m so afraid I’m going to put my feet up on the sofa,” said Mina.
All of us must have our feet up, even Karsten the braggart.
“Well, people say, you know, that the attic in this house is haunted,” said Massa.
“Yes, but that is only nonsense,” said Karsten scornfully.
“Don’t you be so superior, Karsten boy,” I said. “You would not dare to go up in the top loft, not for a million dollars.”
“Yes, indeed, I dare.”
“Well, go then.”
“That would be the easiest thing in the world for me,” Karsten announced; “but there is nothing brave about going up there now.”
“Oh, he’s afraid!” “Shame on him!” “It’s a disgrace for a boy to be afraid.”
We taunted and teased him, all three of us, and pointed scornful fingers at him. “Sha-a-me!”
“I’d just as soon go up there this very minute, if that’s what you want,” said Karsten, stoutly.
Yes, it was exactly what we wanted. Another long argument from him, more and more teasing from us; at last he was sick of it.
“Well, I’m going. You shall see I’m no ’fraid-cat, not I.” And out of the door he ran. We heard him tramp up the attic stairs, and stumble around making all the noise he could as he crossed the long garret.
Never had I admired Karsten so much. He isn’t anything to admire in daily life, more’s the pity, but when he ran up to that haunted attic I had to admire him.
Down-stairs on the sofa we listened with nerves on edge. The wind whined and roared; there came a sudden, violent blast down the chimney, but we heard not a sound from Karsten. Oh, how terror-stricken I was! Suppose the ghost was choking Karsten that moment, and it was I who had teased him into going up there.
I sprang to the door. “Oh, Karsten, Karsten, come down! Come down!”
“Bum, bum, bum!” sounded with frightful distinctness from the loft.
“Did you hear that? Oh, oh, oh, Karsten, Karsten!”
A fresh blast of wind came, the hall door blew open, and in the very same instant there was such a bang and a crash up in the attic as I never heard the equal of. It sounded exactly like an earthquake. It’s true there’s never been an earthquake in our town and I don’t know what kind of noise it would make, but I imagine it would be just about as loud and terrifying as that thundering commotion in the loft. I thought I should die of fright. Massa, Mina, and I clung to each other.
“Oh, I shall die! My heart is thumping dreadfully,” I said.
Just then we heard Karsten. He darted through the hall in a flash, wild with fright.
“Oh, oh, oh, the customs officer said ‘V-s-s-s’ right in my ear!”
We took no long time to think, I assure you, but rushed all together to the door of the drawing-room that led into Father’s office. We did not dare run through the hall, for the customs officer was surely right on Karsten’s heels. It was perfectly pitch-dark in the office. Mina upset a chair as she ran, Massa dashed into a bookcase and screamed. My knees shook so that my legs would scarcely carry me when I got to the office entry.
There is only one door from the office to the courtyard. The important thing now was to unbolt this outside door quickly. Oh, how I pulled! At last I got the door open and the cold outside air struck us. I felt that we were saved as we rushed out into the black night.
“Let’s run home to my house,” said Massa.
So down the hill we all sprang in desperate haste, Karsten leading. How the wind blew! Not a person was to be seen on the whole street down which we ran as if for our lives.
We came within an inch of frightening the wits out of Massa’s mother when we rushed in upon her, white as a sheet and panting for breath. We could scarcely speak we were so terrified.
“Oh! Oh! Such a terrible noise, Mrs. Peckell,” I exclaimed. “Exactly like Pompeii.” I meant “Vesuvius,” but I didn’t remember the right name that minute.
When we had quieted down and had eaten some fig-cake and sweetmeats, we found to our amazement that Karsten denied positively that he had been afraid.
“I ran because you ran,” said he. “And it was just because it was so dark up there that I ran down from the loft. I am not a cat to see in the dark. The rumbling was terrible and something whispered ‘V-s-s-s’ close to my ears; but if the customs officer himself had come he’d have got a warm welcome. Here’s the boy to manage him,” said Karsten.
After a while Ingeborg, with a most bewildered face and carrying our outside things, came to Mrs. Peckell’s to inquire whether we were there.
When she couldn’t find us in any of the rooms and discovered the office door wide open she understood that we had gone out. She had been frightfully worried and had searched for us a long time, and now she was very angry.
“Who ever saw the like of you children? Such outrageous behavior!” grumbled Ingeborg, hurrying us home.
We were the ones who got the “warm welcome,” as Karsten calls it, when Father heard about the ghost. He immediately got a light and we had to go with him up into the loft. Right near the last flight of stairs lay the heavy old folding screen on top of a big tin bath-tub.
“Here is your earthquake, Inger Johanne,” said Father. “Don’t you remember that the tub hung here and the screen stood there? Karsten must have knocked them both down in his fright.”
“Yes, I did run against something,” said Karsten.
“You were the ghost yourself,” said Father. “And as for the other remarkable sounds that you tell of, I shall have a man up on the roof to-morrow to see to the tiles. He’ll put a stop to strange noises, I’ll warrant.”
Just think of its being only the big screen and the bath-tub that we had been so awfully frightened by! Karsten was extremely embarrassed.
Mother did not scold us or laugh at us. She said that those who had died were so happy and so much better off in heaven that they would not wish to come back here.
“Here is your earthquake, Inger Johanne,” said Father.
And that is surely true. For, really, when you come to think of it, what pleasure could it be for an old customs officer to go wandering about in the dark up in a loft?
XVII
A SNOW FIGHT
I wonder if you ever knew anything to equal the wonderful winter weather we had that day. It had been snowing until all the mountains and rocks around our old house had vanished, and instead of them, there were only beautiful mounds so soft-looking that you wanted awfully to turn somersaults in them.
The day before, there had been a very slight thaw, but during the night everything was frozen hard again, and when the sun came out that morning, thousands and tens of thousands of diamonds were scattered everywhere, sparkling, glittering, flashing, so that the brightness hurt your eyes.
On the old trees down the hillside bits of frozen, glistening snow shone out against the blue sky; the sky was wonderfully blue that day, I remember.
How a sudden overwhelming gladness can sometimes take possession of one! Not necessarily because there is anything especial to be happy over. For that matter, such sudden joy can come simply because it is fine, bright weather, and can be so exciting that you want to shout at the top of your lungs, throw out your arms, or turn somersaults, just because it is so good to be alive!
Exactly that way did I feel the morning I am telling you about. Our month’s vacation had begun. I stood on the front steps with my hat and coat on, for I was going to see Massa and Mina, and I was in such high glee over nothing that I had a great mind to jump up into the shining air. But I controlled myself, for through the window of Father’s office I could see Policeman Weiby’s purple nose, and he would certainly think I was crazy if I behaved that way.
When it is frightfully icy on the hill Policeman Weiby always wears boots with sharp nails on the soles when he comes up to see Father. Once inside the house the dumpy old policeman lifts first one foot and then the other so that the nails won’t go into the floor and fasten him there. My! I wish that might happen some day!
I buttoned my light brown gloves very nicely,—they go away up over my wrists,—held my muff straight down, and pushed my chest out and my stomach in, as the grown-up ladies do when they walk about the street. Policeman Weiby probably had wit enough to see now that I was almost grown up.
A long steep slope with trees on both sides leads up to our house. At the bottom of the hill Karsten was toiling and struggling with a great big box which he kept turning over and over so as to get it up the icy hill which was smooth as glass.
The ear-tabs on his fur cap were unfastened and stuck straight out in the air, and his ears, fiery red, looked like two big handles. With his thick fur cap and his hard work, he was dripping with sweat; and on his hands he had big white mittens that were frozen stiff.
“Come and help me,” he called.
I looked at my light brown, tight-fitting gloves.
“No, I thank you,” I said.
“You ought to see what fun it is to coast down on this box; it bumps and makes such a rattlety-bang noise—it’s awfully jolly.”
I suddenly had a burning desire to try this sport, forgot completely that the chest should be held out and the stomach in, took good hold of the box and pulled,—and there it was, up the hill. Then Karsten sat on the front of the box, I back of him and down the hill we went.
It might well be said that we bumped and thumped along. I felt as if I were being shaken to pieces, especially where the road turned at an angle half-way down the hill. Whether that turn caused it or not, smash went the box and thud! Out I tumbled on one side, Karsten on the other, while the remains of the box sped down and hit against Madam Land’s woodshed with a violent whack. My hands had struck the road with such force that both my light brown gloves had burst right across the middle of the palm and my left knee had such a horrid pain in it that I could scarcely get up.
The red-cheeked old woodchopper came out of Madam Land’s woodshed, hitching up his trousers.
“Did she fall off?” he asked. I did not deign to answer him.
Karsten was furious.
“It was your fault, you are so heavy and clumsy; and now the box is smashed that we were to use this afternoon in the snow-fight.”
“A fight? With whom?”
“With the boys at Tangen, of course. Why should they have that grand big coast all to themselves? We boys from the town never go there with a sled without their coming at us and hitting us; and we have only this miserable little hill to coast on.”
“Miserable little hill? This?”
“Yes, I call it a miserable little hill to coast down when Madam Land’s woodshed is right at the foot, blocking the way so that you have to twist your legs off, almost, to steer around on to the church green. But we have had a council of war, and this afternoon we shall thrash those Tangen boys thoroughly and take the hill for our use.”
This sounded frightfully interesting.
“What time are you going to fight?”
“Oh, you needn’t think that we’ll have you girls with us. You may be mighty sure we won’t.”
Karsten always pretends that he knows everything the bigger boys plan among themselves. As a matter of fact, they simply order him around as much as they please, but he will never acknowledge that.
“We were going to have that box to put our balls in,—snowballs, you know. We were going to make lots of them right after dinner, and then drag the box full of snowballs through Main Street and up Back Gorge and there we would be—right behind Tangen in a jiffy.”
I limped up the hill with my bruised knee aching, but I determined that I would go out to Tangen that afternoon to see the snow-fight, no matter how painful my knee was.
In the living-room all through the noon-hour I could hear Karsten in the woodshed, pounding and hammering at the box. Naturally I had wormed out of him that the fight was to begin at half-past three precisely.
I said nothing about having hurt my knee, and a little past three o’clock went down to the town after Massa and Mina. Yes, indeed, they were crazy to go to the fight, even if the boys didn’t want us; and we knew a short cut through Terkelsen’s garden, so off we ran.
By this short cut, we reached the top of the Tangen hill in no time. Oh, but it was a splendid hill! Very steep to begin with, so that it gave you a great send-off—tremendous speed at the start—then a long, long even stretch. You sometimes go as far as away out to Landvigen; but it is only our old blue sled “Seagull” and Nils Trap’s “Racer” that go that distance. That is because they are the best sleds in town.
Only very poor people live at Tangen, pilots and fishermen and laborers. The small houses are scattered about irregularly, one little hut on a height, and another in a hollow.
The whole hill was swarming with children that day,—boys and girls, big and little, and the air rang with their shouting and laughter and jollity. Not many of the children had real sleds; they coasted mostly on a long board, six or eight of them on it at a time. What of that? Hey hurrah! how they went! Some stood on skiis, the kind they make themselves out of barrel-hoops. They whizzed down the hill, bow-legged, bent way over, but they kept on their feet, anyway.
One child had a forlorn sled with a broken runner; and far below on the slope a wee little boy with a kerchief tied round his head, was dragging a stick of wood after him by a string. That was his sled.
None of our boys were to be seen yet. Our appearance on the hill caused great astonishment. Those who were coming up stood still, whispered together and went a little to one side. At that moment a big sailor boy came up—a regular broad-shouldered square-built fellow.
“Come, now!” he shouted to us. “What are you staying around here for? We have a right to coast down our own hill even if some elegant city flies stand and look at us.” His voice was changing, and he talked as loud as if he were in the worst kind of a storm at sea.
At that moment Nils Trap’s crooked nose appeared from behind the slope, and there were the boys, Angemal Terkelsen, Jens Stub, Peter, the dean’s son, Axel Wasserfall, and a whole bunch of boys besides. I saw Karsten bringing up the rear with the box heaping full of snowballs. Ugh! I almost had palpitation of the heart at the thought of what was coming but I couldn’t bear to leave.
“What do you want?” asked the young sailor.
“We want this slope to coast on,” said Axel Wasserfall. “You must pack yourselves off, every one of you, or——”
The young sailor had come close up to Axel, turning sideways and holding his arms out as boys do when they wish to pick a quarrel with any one, and staring the whole time straight into Axel’s eyes.
“Pack yourselves off, did you say? Pack yourselves off? I’ll give you ‘pack yourselves’—mass of herring-bones that you are!”
And before Axel could catch his breath, the young sailor’s fist struck him in the chest, and he was lying in the snowdrift with the sailor over him; but at the same instant Nils Trap and Angemal Terkelsen jumped on the sailor’s back. Then there was such a tussle that the snow flew in all directions.
A crowd of Tangen boys came storming up the hill, but now Karsten and the rear-guard pressed forward with the snowballs.
Massa, Mina, and I were thoroughly scared and went off to one side. The air was filled with the fast-flying icy snowballs, which hurt wherever they hit, as I myself can bear witness, for one hit me on the cheek and I had to hold my handkerchief there the whole time, it hurt me so much.
My, but it was exciting! They shouted and they screamed; they did not keep to the coast any longer, but struggled and fought out in the deep snow beside the road while fast as ever, without a pause, came the snowballs from the rear-guard whistling past one’s ears.
The women from the houses around flocked out on their stone steps with babies in their arms and kept calling out something to which no one listened.
Our boys had naturally the better position the whole time, for they stood on the hilltop and threw their snowballs down, while the Tangen boys stood below and had to throw theirs up. It was not many minutes before the Tangen boys had to take to their heels and run for shelter among the houses.
One and another lonely snowball still came whizzing up in a long curve, but it was easy to see that the Tangen boys felt themselves beaten.
Axel and Ludvig on our old broad “Seagull” coasted down first; and after them the others in a long row. My! how they laughed and shouted.
Angemal Terkelsen threw himself on his stomach on a sled—he always wants to be so bold—and Jens Stub sat astride his back.
Peter, the dean’s son, started off with his flat red sled. It was made in the country and goes so slowly that the other boys call it the “Snail.” Then Peter gets offended, for he is the kind of boy who never gets angry, but only offended.
But in the midst of all the fun and hurrahing, I began to hear a pitiful sound of crying. When I looked about, I found it came from the little boy with the kerchief on his head, the child I had noticed dragging a stick of wood by a string. It was Tollef, our washerwoman’s little boy.
A snowball had hit him in the eye, he had lost his stick of wood, and he was crying and crying. He knocked on the door of a little house, but his mother had gone out and the door was locked.
In the house next to the one outside of which Tollef stood crying, lived a man whom the whole town called Jack-of-all-trades, because he fixed lamps, soldered old teakettles, and mended all sorts of things. He was a little, grimy man and was now standing out on his front steps.
“Will you take away even this little bit of pleasure from the poor folks’ children?” asked Jack-of-all-trades. He looked at our boys laughing and shouting as they coasted down the long hill. His black eyes flashed and I came pretty near being afraid of him as I stood there. And all at once it struck me what a shame it was and what a horrid, mean thing we had done when we drove those poverty-stricken children from that hill of theirs. I rushed to the snowball box, tipped it over and trampled what snowballs there were left into the snow with all my might.
I remember that I began to cry when I got home; I told Mother that my knee pained me from the knock it got when I coasted on the box, and that was true; but really my crying was more because of what Jack-of-all-trades had said, and because we had spoiled the fun of poor little bow-legged Tollef.
However, the Tangen boys got their hill back again before long, you may be sure of that! And I’m glad to say that our boys have let them alone ever since.
XVIII
A CHRISTMAS VISIT
A few days before Christmas, whether because Mother was sick or for some other reason, it was decided that Karsten and I should be sent to the Parsonage for a short visit. Peter Olsen, from Uncle’s parish, was just then in town, so a message was sent to him, asking if he would take us with him in his sleigh. All waters were frozen, even the fjord, so we could drive the whole distance.
Indeed, Peter Olsen had not the least objection to taking us, and late in the evening two days before Christmas the sleigh and two big horses stood before our door. I always like to sit where I can see the horses, so I sat in front with the driver and Karsten sat behind with Peter Olsen.
Karsten was so stuffed out with wraps that people in town, as I heard later, thought that he was Peter’s wife. For a long time afterward, when I wished to tease Karsten, I would call him Mrs. Peter Olsen, for that made him furious.
We drove along in the moonlight over hills and frozen ponds, and through groves where the branches hung so low that they hit our heads and sent an avalanche of soft wet snow down our necks.
On Sandy-point fjord, the moonlight shed its silver radiance over the ice; and the ice gave forth a hollow roaring sound under the big sleigh and the heavy feet of the horses. Peter Olsen was known as a regular dare-devil on the ice but perhaps even he felt that the fjord was not wholly to be trusted that night, for all at once he stood up to his full height in the sleigh, struck out with his arms and called loudly to the horses in both German and French.
“Allons!” shouted Peter with all the power of his lungs. His red, curly beard showed clearly in the moonlight. Sharp particles of frozen snow whizzed about our ears; and bits of ice and lumps of snow were thrown upon us as the horses dashed swiftly along. Now we were nearing the shore. Peter called to the driver that he must throw himself out of the sleigh to lighten it; he himself, still standing upright, seized the reins in his powerful hands. The ice groaned and creaked. Peter kept on shouting to the horses. There! At last they had firm ground under their feet. The driver came trudging along, and Peter Olsen turned to look back at the breaking ice.
“Well! We managed that fine!” said he, chuckling and laughing.
Farther up the slope, we overtook a little schoolmaster who was allowed to stand on the runners at the back of the sleigh. The road was only a wood-road and very rough with naked tree-roots, stones and lumps of ice.
“This isn’t as flat as a pancake, is it?” remarked the little schoolmaster.
Far off in the forest some beast gave an ugly howl. Peter said it was a wolf, but I was not the least bit scared. It was impossible to be afraid, when you were with Peter Olsen, so stout and strong and trustworthy.
At a sharp turn in the road, the little schoolmaster fell off his perch on the runners of the sleigh and lay flat in the road.
“Now we have discharged the teacher,” said Peter Olsen. We had to wait quite a while in the darkness under the trees before he caught up with us.
Nothing a bit interesting happened during the rest of the long ride, and at half-past twelve we drew up at the Parsonage.
I had rejoiced at the prospect of going to the Parsonage at Christmas time, but now that I was there, it wasn’t just as I had expected it to be.
It looked so altogether different in winter from what it did in summer,—so old and gray, almost hidden in snow, and as if crouching under the hill. In the second story where the rooms were not used in winter, all the windows were entirely covered with white frost. The courtyard was one expanse of ice, with narrow black paths, where ashes had been strewn, leading from one building to another. The maids stepped cautiously along these ash paths, but even so, one or another maid would suddenly sit down with a resounding thwack.
Great-Aunt was at the door and seemed glad enough to see us. She was pretty good to us children, though she never liked any of our fun or play, no matter what it was. Karsten was her especial favorite. He amused her mightily because he exaggerated so much. She would listen with a most serious face to Karsten’s yarns.
“We have a cat at home,” Karsten told her, “that is the wickedest cat in the whole town. No other cat dares come into our yard, for our cat either bites its head off or kills it at once.”
“That must be a bad cat,” said Great-Aunt.
“Yes, and it is so big, too. Why, really, if you see it a little way off, you would think it was a calf; yes, some have thought it was a cow.”
“Ugh! That must be a horrid town to live in, with such cats around,” said Great-Aunt. “But I suppose there are some big, strong men there, too.”
“Oh, yes! You may be sure of that. One man at home is so strong that he carried a barrel of wheat, full of water besides, up a hill that was as steep as the wall of this room.”
That is the way Karsten would go on, and Great-Aunt was tremendously amused by it.
But now I must tell you how things went during Christmas tide.
The whole place was in perfect order, freshly cleaned from cellar to attic, shining and beautiful. When we came down-stairs in the morning, the regular Christmas Eve dinner was already under way. I sat on the kitchen bench and ate various Christmas goodies.
Later, I went to the barn and stable and to see the pigs and the poultry.
When evening came, it wasn’t as cosy and delightful as Christmas Eve at home always is, but it wasn’t so bad, after all. Karsten never behaves himself anything extra when he is away from home, and he didn’t this time. First, he slept while Uncle preached, and nodded so that he nearly fell off his chair several times. Then he was sick in the night because he had eaten too much, as he has done every single Christmas as far back as I can remember.
Uncle gave me a gold-piece,—an English sovereign. Aunt Magda gave me a religious book in red binding and with gilt edges that will look very bright and handsome in my bookcase; and Great-Aunt gave me a charming little brooch of silver filigree.
It was really a pleasant Christmas Eve, after all; but when I had gone to bed, I lay awake and thought of Mother, and at last I couldn’t help crying. I smothered my crying in the blankets, however, so that Karsten should not hear, for if he heard me crying, he would begin; and he roars so when he cries that he would have aroused the whole house.
Well, what do you think? On Christmas morning it rained! Yes, a fine drizzling rain with fog out over the sea and up on the hill. When the church bells rang, they sounded like big muffled cow-bells through the fog. From the shore came the church folk, walking slowly in large groups. They did not go into the church but stood out in the drizzling rain, by the door or by the stone wall of the churchyard, waiting for the minister to go in first.
Uncle in his cassock was walking up and down the living-room floor talking with the deacon. The deacon was a big, fat man in a frock coat that was too narrow for him and pinched at the armholes. Everything about Deacon Vebjornsen was unusually large—except his frock coat. His mouth was big, his smile was big and his neck was very, very big.
“Well, well!” said Uncle.
“Well, well! Well, well!” said the deacon.
The church in another part of the parish was being repaired, so the people from there came to the service in Uncle’s church in Sandvaag. Their deacon came, too, and Deacon Vebjornsen and he tried to see which could sing loudest. Neither would give up. Never in my life have I seen or heard any one sing as the two deacons did that Christmas day in Sandvaag church. They stood erect in the pew, both with their mouths stretched wide open. I expected every minute that they would burst something inside of them.
Above the piercing sounds the two deacons made, came Uncle’s dear voice from the pulpit, sweet and mellow and kind.
It made me think of Mother, and I had to try with all my might to keep from crying. I couldn’t bear that any one should see me crying in church.
Uncle invited ever so many to go to the Parsonage to dinner; —two sailors with their wives, three school-teachers and a widow with three children. Great-Aunt stood out in the kitchen, crimson in the face, and awfully provoked at Uncle.
“Did you ever see such a man?” she burst out. “He goes and invites eleven strangers to dinner without my having any idea of it; and the roast will be too small. The three teachers are equal to eating up all the princess pudding, just themselves alone, and—oh, I wish I were thirty feet under ground!—But I could have told you beforehand that this would happen. I could have told you!”
Aunt Magda had to go out to comfort her, and it took much coaxing to get Great-Aunt to go to the dinner-table.
“There are people enough there already,” she said.
When she was at the table she kept urging and insisting that the three teachers should eat more and more of the French beans for she knew there were plenty of them.
I should like to tell you that we had a pleasant time after dinner that Christmas Day; but to tell the plain truth, I was perfectly bored.
The ladies sat in the big parlor, drank coffee and talked old-granny fashion about every possible kind of sickness; so I knew it would be much pleasanter in the sitting-room with Uncle and the sailors and the three teachers. I had just sat down in there to listen to them when Aunt Magda came and asked me to go and amuse the strange little boys.
Karsten and the oldest boy were out on the front steps.
“Have you good muscle in your arms?” asked Karsten.
“No, I don’t think so,” answered the strange boy.
“Look here,—here you can see”—Karsten stretched out his arm. “That’s the way an arm should be, the muscle standing up in a curve; feel of this and you’ll know what muscle is.”
The boy felt of Karsten’s arm.
“You feel of it, too,” said Karsten to the two smaller boys. “Exactly like lignum vitæ, and lignum vitæ is the hardest thing in the world.”
All the boys admired Karsten’s muscle tremendously, that was easy to see.
It still rained steadily, so I suggested that we go into the inner hall. Oh, that dear old Parsonage hall, where there was always a smell of old cheese and such things. Yes, the front hall smelled of rose-leaves, but the inner hall of old cheese. In the front hall, we bowed and curtsied nicely and were well-behaved; but in the other hall we played and romped and had great fun.
For the moment, I couldn’t think of anything to do there but slide down the banisters. You know what jolly fun that is, sliding so frightfully fast, especially where the banister curves. I went ahead up the stairs, the four boys after me, away up to the attic, then whizz! down the banisters! The whole troop tramped up the stairs again, whizz! down again. My! this was getting to be great fun—there stood Great-Aunt at the door.
“Are you crazy, you children? Will you tear the house down over our heads? Out with you! Out, I say.”
So there we were. What should we do now?
“Let’s put up a swing in the woodshed,” I suggested.
The others agreed instantly. Karsten ran to the harness-room to get a rope. I climbed up one side of the woodshed and Karsten the other; we tied and knotted the rope around a beam and made a perfectly splendid swing. When we swung very high, we went through the doorway right out into the air. To be so awfully high up gave me a tickle-y feeling in my stomach, but I liked it.
We took turns. The littlest boy was afraid. He clung tight to the rope and screamed!
“Fie for shame! A boy that doesn’t dare to swing!” I said. So he got into the swing and we pushed him; but suddenly, when he was at the very highest, he let go and fell whack! on the woodshed floor.
I was terribly scared, for it was really my fault that he had got into the swing. He sobbed and cried, poor little thing, and had a big blue bump on his forehead. I picked up a lump of ice and held it to the bump. The other children kept on swinging as high as they could.
Just then Great-Aunt appeared, with a purple handkerchief over her head.
“There! Didn’t I know there was something crazy going on again? It would be a fine thing if you made all the wood here tumble down on you, wouldn’t it? And he has fallen and hurt himself. Well, it is a wonder to me that you are all alive as yet. Take that down,” concluded Great-Aunt in her crossest tone. “Take that swing down this moment, Inger Johanne.” Great-Aunt turned to me. “For it is certainly you who are responsible for this whole business.” Karsten and I had to climb and untie the rope.
“And now come with me into the big parlor, every one of you,” said Great-Aunt. “I can’t be easy a minute unless I have you sitting right under my eyes.”
Well! There we had to sit, five of us in a row, as stiff as posts the whole long afternoon. Ugh! how angry I was at Great-Aunt.
The next day there was service in the church again, and the two deacons tried as hard as ever to out-sing each other; but Uncle did not invite any one home to dinner. I suppose he didn’t wish to displease Great-Aunt again.
“There now! To-day he might have invited half the town,” said Great-Aunt, “for to-day I have plenty of food.”
It rained and it rained. What in the world should Karsten and I do? Slide down the banisters we mustn’t, swing in the woodshed we mustn’t; but to lay a board across the chopping block and play seesaw, surely there could be no harm in that.
We found a board and seesawed up and down, up and down, until Nella, the parlor maid, came out with the message that we were to stop. We might pinch our fingers, Great-Aunt thought!
“Well, let’s go and jump in the hay in the barn,” suggested Karsten. “That’s awfully good fun.”
I had just got Karsten in the hay under me and heaped so much hay on top of him that he could scarcely breathe, when we heard Aunt Magda’s sweet, gentle voice from the barn door.
“Oh, you dear, dear children! Don’t do that! Great-Aunt says that you might lose a pin in the hay that a cow would eat, and the pin might stick in her insides. Come, dears, be good children and don’t play in the hay any more.”
“Oh, no, Aunt Magda! Don’t say that. Just come and see what fun it is. I haven’t a single pin about me, Aunt Magda.”
“Well, but you might lose a button, Great-Aunt says, and a cow might get it in her throat and choke on it; so come now, like good children.”
Of course there was nothing else to do. Out of the hay must we come. Karsten was perfectly desperate with boredom.
“I’m going home,” he said. “I won’t stay here any longer, and I’m never, never in the world coming here again. They can eat their good food themselves for all of me.”
I wouldn’t tell Karsten so, but I felt just as he did; and every night when I had gone to bed, I had a dreadful longing for home. I felt as if something heavy lay on my heart and clutched it. Why are they so afraid and won’t let us do anything? How queer old people are! When I am old I am not going to be like Great-Aunt, I’m sure of that.
We had been at the Parsonage four days and still had to stay over Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I didn’t believe I should ever see Father and Mother again. And people said it was so pleasant to go visiting! No, it wasn’t; it was horrid, it was very, very sad. I thought that if I ever got home again,—if I ever did,—I’d never, never go away from Father and Mother any more.
When I awoke next morning and saw Nella at my bedside with a tray of coffee and little cakes, I found myself, strangely enough, in much better spirits. It was rather pleasant, after all, to go visiting.
“What kind of weather is it, Nella?”
“Delightful and warm,” said Nella.
Karsten and I would rather have had good ice for skating and hard snow for coasting, so we couldn’t agree with Nella that the weather was delightful when the wind was warm and the roofs dripping.
However, we were in brilliant good humor that morning, Karsten and I. If I had imagined then what the day would bring——
Great-Aunt had not forbidden us to go into the sheep-barn, and so we were there early and late. How cosy and snug it is in a sheep-barn and what a good smell there is of sheep’s wool and dry leaves and hay!
Almost all the sheep were afraid of us, and they crowded themselves together and pushed and squeezed each other away off to a corner, looking at us with innocent eyes. There was just one sheep that was not afraid of people and liked to be petted. It squeezed itself up against me and lay close beside me when I sat down. My! How I did love that sheep!
Before we went down there that morning, Karsten suggested that we get some boiled potatoes from those that had been cooked for breakfast and take them to the sheep. I thought this was an excellent idea. It happened that there was no one in the kitchen when I went in; I supplied myself with a heaping plateful of big potatoes and went my way.
When the sheep had once tasted the potatoes, I thought they had gone crazy. They jumped over each other, pushed and jammed and pressed themselves forward, trying to get at the plate. I held it high above my head. Oh-h! All the potatoes tumbled off and rolled among the sheep. They butted each other, scrambled for the potatoes, snatched and ate in haste.
“Oh, see that sheep of yours!” said Karsten suddenly. “How queerly it behaves! Did you ever see anything like it?”
Oh-h! All the potatoes tumbled off and rolled among the sheep.
I looked. Yes, I had to agree with him, that the sheep he pointed to, my dear pet sheep, was behaving in a most peculiar manner. It went backward round and round a couple of times with wide-open mouth; suddenly it fell on its side, kicked a little, stretched its legs out to their full length and then lay perfectly still.
Oh, how frightened I was!
“What is it, Karsten? What is the matter with it? Help me to get it up. Oh, my sweet, dear sheep! Go after the milkmaid, Karsten,” I said.
He was gone an eternity it seemed to me, but at last came back with the milkmaid.
“What have you done, child?” she asked in terror. “The sheep is dead. You’ll catch it from old Miss.” (She meant Great-Aunt.) “You gave it a whole potato and that stuck in its throat, you see, and choked it so it couldn’t breathe. O me! O me! What a misfortune!”
I ran out of the sheep-barn; Karsten was right at my heels and we rushed into the kitchen where Great-Aunt stood at the stove cooking something.
“Oh, Great-Aunt! I have killed a sheep with a potato!”
If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget how Great-Aunt looked as she turned towards me.
“There! Didn’t I know it would be so?” Words came at last. “Trouble-maker that you are! Why in the world did you come here? Children should stay at home, I think——”
I heard no more, for I ran out—ran I did not know where, but at last I found myself sitting in a dark corner of the barn behind the hay-cutter.
O dear! O dear! How horrid it was! I should never be happy again, never, never! Why did we have to come here this Christmas? Why did the sheep get the potato in its throat? I meant to give them all a treat. And now Uncle and Aunt Magda would be furiously angry with me, and perhaps Father and Mother would be too. I cried and sobbed as if my heart would break.
How long I sat there I do not know, but it must have been for hours. I heard them call me many times, but I kept still; the thought of seeing any one was unbearable.
Little by little my crying stopped and I began to follow a new train of thought. I would stay in this corner all my life—yes, and starve to death—perhaps steal out at night and get a little food—but no one should know that I lay in hiding here; and when many years later they found me behind the hay-cutter, lying dead with a tear-stained face—then horrid Great-Aunt would be sorry enough.
Suddenly I heard Aunt Magda’s voice right near me.
“Oh, my dear, blessed child! Are you lying here? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Are you very angry about the sheep, Auntie?”
“Oh, far from it! You didn’t mean to do any harm. Great-Aunt is very hasty, you know.”
“And Uncle?”
“Oh, Uncle will understand,” said Aunt Magda, comfortingly. “And now, my jewel, don’t think of it any more.”
Oh, how I loved Aunt Magda! How unspeakably, unspeakably! The whole afternoon I sat close beside her or followed her about. I would not leave her for an instant.
At last the day came for us to go home, traveling this time by the steamer.
Great-Aunt gave us a big package of fig-cakes and raisins and almonds, and when we said good-bye, she patted us on the shoulder and asked us to come again soon. So she wasn’t so bad, after all!
When the steamer reached our town, Karsten and I were the first on the wharf. We leaped up the hill to our home in just about one bound, and up the steps. We hadn’t time to shut the doors after us, but left them standing open all the way to Mother’s room. There sat Mother in an easy-chair, reaching out her arms to us.
“Oh, Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!” And Mother took us in her arms, pressing us close to her breast.
“Oh, my dear, dear children!”
There is nothing in the world so delightful as to come home.
