Well, now you know us all, and you know what it is like around here.
CHAPTER II
AN INTERRUPTED CELEBRATION
My, how well I remember the day that we almost killed the dean's wife! That sounds queer; but it really was a live dean's wife that we really came within a hair's breadth of killing. And that, while we were just playing and celebrating the Seventeenth of May—the day when Norway adopted her own constitution, you know.
Now you shall hear how it happened.
Right behind our old house we have a whole big breezy hill. If any of you live down on the coast, you will know how beautiful it is and what fun one can have up on such a hill. If you have only seen it as you went by on the steamer, you would never imagine how lovely it is up on bare gray hills that look out towards the sea. Little soil, but lots of sunshine; wherever there is a tiny crevice, fine long blades of grass, buttercups, and yellow broom will immediately start up. Wild rose bushes and juniper cling to the hillside here and there, and then the heather away up on the top;—all over the whole flat top nothing but purple heather. Above is the clear blue sky; and out there the sea in a great wide circle—nothing to shut off the view; oh, it is glorious!
This has really nothing to do with the dean's wife, but I only wanted to explain what it was like up there on the hill. For it was up there that Nils Trap, Ezekiel, Peter, Karsten, Mina, Massa, and I played, many a pleasant day.