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.”