The Birch and the Star, and Other Stories

by Jørgen Engebretsen Moe; Zacharias Topelius

"Yes, yes, and now she knows, for now that eyebrow is just like the other one," said Beate.

Oh, how Beate grew to love that doll, almost more than she loved Marie and Louise, and they were her best friends.

One day Beate was walking in the yard with her doll in her arms. The doll had a name now, and they had become fast friends. She had called her Beate, her own name, and the name of her old aunt who had given her the doll.

It was in the early spring. There was a beautiful green spot, with fine, soft grass in one corner of the yard around the old well. There stood a big willow tree with a low trunk, and it was covered with the little yellow blossoms that children call goslings.

They look like goslings too, for each little tassel has soft, soft yellow down, and they can swim in the water, but walk?—no, that they cannot do.

Now Big Beate—she wasn't more than five years old, but she was ever so much bigger than the other one—and Little Beate, soon agreed that they would pick goslings from the tree and throw them into the well, so that they might have just as good a time as the big geese and goslings that were swimming about in the pond. It was really Big Beate who thought of this first, but Little Beate agreed immediately; you can't imagine how good she always was.

Now Big Beate climbed up into the willow and picked many pretty yellow goslings into her white apron, and when she counted them and had counted to twenty, twice, she said that now they had enough, and Little Beate thought so too.

So she began to climb down, but that was not easy for she had to hold her apron together with one hand and climb with the other. She thought Little Beate called up to her to throw the goslings down first, but she didn't dare to do that; she was afraid they might fall and hurt themselves.

Now both of them ran over to the well, and Big Beate helped her little friend to get her legs firmly fixed between the logs that were around the well, so that she might sit in comfort and watch the little goslings swim about on the water. Then gosling after gosling was dropped down, and as soon as each one reached the water it seemed to become alive and it moved about. Oh, what fun! Big Beate clapped her hands to the pretty little downy birds, and when she helped Little Beate a bit, she too could clap her hands.

But after awhile the little goslings would not swim any longer but lay quite still. That was no fun at all, so Big Beate asked her namesake if she didn't think she might lean a little over the edge of the well and blow on them, for then she thought they might come to life again. Little Beate didn't answer, but she raised her left eyebrow a good deal and moved her right arm in the air as if she were saying, "Please don't do that, dear Big Beate! Don't you remember Mother has told us how dark it is down there in the well? Think, if you should fall in!"