Sometimes we begin away back on the hilltop and make sluices, and wall them up with heather and moss, so as to make the water run where we want it to. Karsten carries the stones and gets fiery red in the face, even with his hat off. I do the walling up and give the orders, for I am the engineer, you see.
It must be awfully nice to be an engineer when you are grown up, but sad to say, I never can be, since I am a girl. However, Karsten can be the engineer and I can sit in his office and be the one to manage the whole concern, just as I do on the hilltop here; for Karsten can never think of anything new to do, but I can.
A little way down the hill we have our reservoir which all the streams run into. It is in a particularly good place, a deep hollow close to the top of the steepest precipice on the whole hill. All it needs is a little walling up on one side, but that has to be very strong and solid; for sometimes we have more than two feet of water in the reservoir, and then it will easily overflow.
After we have it all built, comes the great moment of letting the waterfall loose. Karsten and I each have a stout stake,—quick as lightning we punch a hole through the dam, and down rushes the waterfall over the precipice. The yellowish marsh water which we have led to the pool from way back on the hilltop is one mass of white foam. It thunders and crashes and spatters just like a real waterfall.
The only nuisance about it is that it lasts so short a time. Even if the pond is full up to the brim the water can all run out in five minutes. On that account we always try to let off the waterfall when there is some one besides ourselves to see it. It doesn't matter who it is, even if it is only the stone-breaker's child, but we must have at least one spectator, or we shouldn't care to let off the waterfall.
Right on the slope below the precipice is the cottage of Soren, the mason. Our land joins on to his farm. When we let out the waterfall the water streams down over our land right behind the big walnut tree. It had always taken the very same course and it never entered my head that it could take any other.
But now you shall hear. It had rained twelve days on a stretch, and that just as the summer vacation had begun. In fact, it seems to me it always does—every year. Well, never mind that. At any rate Karsten and I were almost bored to death. It was all right for Karsten to stand out in the rain and sail birch bark boats in the brewing vat which stood full of water out in the farmyard, but I outgrew such play years ago, of course. As for sitting and reading books in the very middle of the summer, there is no sort of sense in that. At least I don't think there is any fun in it; so I will say outright that I was dreadfully bored.
Finally, one day, out came the sun. It shone and it glittered. The grass, the fences, and the washed-out stones all dripped and sparkled as the sun sent its blazing light upon them. And there wasn't a crack or a crevice on the whole hilltop that wasn't brimming over with water.
Oh! what a waterfall we could make to-day!
"Karsten! Karsten! Will you come with me and make a waterfall?"