“No, I thank you,” shouted Tharald, as he saw the knife, “I can do that myself. I don’t want you to harm him.”
“I don’t intend to harm him,” said Anders. “I only want to force his mouth open.”
To this Tharald submitted. The knife was carefully inserted at the corner of the little monster’s mouth, when lo! he let the hand go, and snapped after the knife-blade. Anders quickly threw his hat over him, and held it down with his knees, while he tore a piece off the lining of his coat to bandage his brother’s wound. Then they trudged home together with the otter imprisoned in the hat.
You would scarcely have thought that “Mons”—for that became the otter’s name—would have made a pleasant companion; but strange as it may seem, he improved much, as soon as he got into civilized society. He soon learned that it was not good-manners to snarl and show his teeth when politely addressed, and if occasionally he forgot himself, he got a little tap on the nose which quickened his memory. He was scarcely six inches long when he was caught, not reckoning the tail; and so sleek and nimble and glossy, that it was a delight to handle him His fur was of a very dark brown, and when it was wet looked black. It was so dense that you could not, by pulling the hair apart, get the slightest glimpse of the skin. But the most remarkable things about Mons were the webs he had between his toes, and his long glossy whiskers. Of the latter he was particularly proud; he would allow no one to touch them.
Tharald taught him a number of tricks, which Mons learned with astonishing ease. He was so intelligent that Sultan, the bull-terrier, grew quite jealous of him.
Inquisitiveness seemed to be the strongest trait in Mons’s character. His curiosity amounted to an overmastering passion. There was no crevice that he did not feel called upon to investigate, no hole which he did not suspect of hiding some interesting secret. Again and again he made explorations in the flour-barrel, and came out as white as a miller. Once, for the sake of variety, he put his nose into the inkstand, and in attempting to withdraw it, poured the contents over his head.
In the part of Norway where Tharald’s father lived, the people added largely to their income by salmon-fishing. Nay, those who had no land made their living entirely by fishing and shooting. Every spring the salmon migrated from the sea into the rivers, to deposit their spawn; you could see their young darting in large schools over the pebbles in the shallows of the streams, pursued by the big fishes that preyed upon them. Then the perch and the trout grew fat, and the pike and the pickerel made royal meals out of the perch and trout. All along the coast lay English schooners, ready to buy up the salmon and carry it on ice to London. Everywhere there was life and traffic; everybody felt prosperous and in good-humor.
It was during this season that Tharald one day walked down to the lake to try his luck with a fly. It had been raining during the night; and the trees along the shore shivered and shook down showers of raindrops. The only trouble was that the water was so clear that you could see the bottom, which sloped gently outward for fifty or a hundred feet. Mons, who was now a year old, was sitting in his usual place on Tharald’s shoulder, and was gazing contentedly upon the smiling world which surrounded him. He was so fond of his master, now, that he followed him like a dog, and could not bear to be long away from him.
“Mons,” said Tharald, after having vainly thrown the alluring fly a dozen times into the river, “I think this is a bad day for fishing; or what do you think?”