it always makes the shivers go down my back; and old Miss Weyergang says that is a sign of the “highest artistic enjoyment” any one can have. Miss Weyergang was in Berlin once and heard “Lucca” sing, and she felt as if one pail of cold water after another were emptied over her; and nothing could have been more delightful, Miss Weyergang says.
So we must have Karsten. I can’t sing a bit. When I try to take a high note, there comes out the queerest sound. It is like the noise Karsten makes when I have shut him in the big empty meal-chest, and he screeches so frightfully from inside there.
But if you imagine Karsten is willing to help us with our performance, you make a great mistake.
“Do you think I will come and play with you girls? Be the only boy? No, thank you. Perhaps you can get such a girl-boy as Peter, the dean’s son, to do that, but not me. Very likely you’d dress me up as you used to when I was little. Humph! No, indeed. I’m a chap who has outgrown all that sort of thing.”
Well, this was going to cost us dear. To try to force Karsten would be of no use. We must coax him.
“If you will be in our theatricals, Karsten, I’ll rip off the two big buttons from the back of my winter coat and give them to you; crocheted buttons, you know.”
“We-ell, you’ll have to give me the two that are on the front of the coat, too.”
“Yes, yes; but then you must sing four times,—once for each button.”
Karsten grumbled a little at this, but Massa promised him a cornucopia full of plums from their shop, and so he gave in.
At school the next day, off in a corner of the class-room, we wrote the program. All the other girls crowded about us, wishing to know what the secret was. Massa and I stood in front and pushed them away, while behind us Mina and Karen wrote as fast as they could on the program. Such an excitement!