"I'm thankful to see you again," said Mother. "You must know I was worried about you."
"Beautiful eyes, the puss has," said Uncle Karl suddenly.
I looked around astonished, for there didn't seem to be any puss anywhere. But only think! he meant me. I have looked carefully at my eyes since, but I don't think they are beautiful at all, for they are too round and look so surprised.
Oh, what fun we had at Uncle Karl's! I do not know that I should ever come to an end if I tried to tell about it, so I won't begin, for I have a tremendous gift of gab when I once get started;—at least that is what everybody says.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE MEAL CHEST
We have an awfully cosy cellar, you must know. Of course the whole house is old and rather tumbledown, so the cellar is nothing very fine; but it is awfully cosy and exactly right for playing in, in bad weather. I don't know a cellar in the whole town that is cosier; and I am fairly well acquainted with all of them, you may be sure.
Our cellar isn't underground. It is a high basement and in it is a big brewery and laundry, a big servant's room, and a big wine cellar where there is never any wine; on the other side of the basement is the storeroom for food and the potato cellar. The walls are brown and dark just from age; and the floor rocks so that I often wonder that the big casks and barrels, and fat Christine and Maren the washerwomen, who are forever washing there, do not fall through, perhaps into some deep abyss underground. But it must be tough, that floor, for it still holds.