Our currants were gone long ago. Karsten eats them when they are a little red on one side, and the few that are left shrivel up in the roasting hot sun; for our garden is awfully sunny, you see. But Madam Igland’s garden, being on lower ground, is always cool and fresh, with a sweetish, spicy smell of cabbage and herbs and onion and newly-turned soil, and stiff, tall grasses in the outer corners of the garden.
I had long known that there was a loose board in the fence,—well, not entirely loose, but very shaky, you know. If you should just pull a little hard on it, it would come loose, that was certain.
One afternoon Mina and I hadn’t a thing to do. We couldn’t play up on the hilltop, it was so unbearably hot there. To play ball in such heat was utterly impossible; besides, Karsten had lost our best ball. The flat church steps which are so exactly suitable for playing jackstones on, and where Mina and I play almost every afternoon, were packed full of street boys who were playing with buttons.
Pshaw! There wasn’t a thing for us to do.
All at once, something flashed into my mind.
“Let’s go down to Madam Igland’s garden and see whether there are many currants there,” said I.
Mina agreed instantly.
Soon we stood with our noses through the cracks. My! so big as those currants were to-day, currants had surely never been before! And oh, how ripe! The branches were so full that they drooped right down to the ground. Ola Silnes was nowhere to be seen. Oline was in the carrot-bed weeding. On her head she had a towel, pulled far forward to keep the sun off of her face.
“Oh, Mina! Do you know there is a board loose over there?”
I went to it to show her. Yes, it was very, very shaky; almost ready to come out.