I, INGER JOHANNE
I have always heard grown people say that when you meet strangers and there is no one else to introduce you, it is highly proper and polite to introduce yourself. Uncle Karl says that polite people always get on in the world; and as I want dreadfully to do that, I will be polite and tell you who I am.
Everybody in our town knows me; and they call me "the Judge's Inger Johanne," because my father is the town judge, you see; and I am thirteen years old. So now you know me.
And just think! I am going to write a book! If you ask, "What about?" I shall have to say, "Nothing in particular," for I haven't a speck more to tell of than other girls thirteen years old have, except that queer things are always happening to me, somehow.
Probably it isn't easy to write a book when you have never done it before, especially when thoughts come galloping through your head as fast as they do through mine. Why, I think of a hundred things, while Peter, the dean's son, is thinking of one and a half! But, easy or not, since I, Inger Johanne, have set my heart on writing a book, write it I will, you may be sure; and now I begin in earnest.