"You could just have scratched his back as you do to bears in menageries," said I. Augusta laughed so that her laughter echoed through the whole place, and I teased them as much as I could. When I really make a point of it, I'm awful at teasing—it is such fun.
"Ugh! Girls are nothing but rubbish," said Karsten.
"To think that you didn't strangle the bear with such muscles as you have," I said.
"If you don't keep still!" said Karsten threateningly.
It was such fun! I laughed till my cheeks ached.
My! but that was an awfully jolly and delightful visit to the saeter. But at night Andrine and I slept in a bed that was as hard as a stone, and Andrine lay the whole night right across the bed and squeezed me almost to death.
In the morning the air and everything was oh, so fresh! Our hair blew all over our faces; we washed in the brook and the water was so cold that our finger-nails ached.
After breakfast we started home again. We stood up in the wagon and shouted hurrah as long as we could see Augusta in the saeter hut door, and after that we sang all the way down the mountain.
But that story of the bear at the saeter Petter and Karsten had to hear all summer long, for they were just as puffed up as ever.
Nothing impresses such conceited boys, you know.