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.