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.