“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.