[The Floating Island]
Beate was now a year older. During that year she had never forgotten Little Beate. She had looked for her in the orchard and far away in the pasture.
When Mother had asked Viggo about Little Beate he answered that the country was full of vikings and wild beasts, and that he did not know anything about the doll.
Big Beate had many dolls given to her, but not one was like Little Beate. No one was so sweet and good natured, no one so pretty and graceful.
Either the dolls had cheeks that were too red or they could not be dressed right—stiff and clumsy they all were when they tried to move their arms and legs, and it was no use at all to talk to them.
Beate had a beautiful play house with a table and chairs and a bureau in one corner.
It was a Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, she expected her friends, Marie and Louise, on a visit, for it was her birthday; therefore she wanted to decorate her doll house as prettily as she could. All the furniture was placed just right, and she had strewn fresh leaves on the floor, but she needed some pretty little ornaments for her bureau.
Beate knew what to do. On the hillside by the Black Pond she remembered that she had seen the prettiest little snail shells anyone might wish for, round and fluted with yellow and brown markings. They would be just the thing for the bureau, if she could only find empty ones. She ran off to search for them, slipping in and out through the hazel bushes, and creeping in under the mountain ashes and junipers on the steep hillside, and picking empty snail shells by the dozen.
But all of a sudden she heard a bird cry such a weird cry from the lake. She peeped out between the green branches and saw a big, big bird swimming about down there; it had a long blue neck and a white breast, but its back was shining black. It swam over the lake so fast that you could see a streak in the water behind it, and then suddenly it dived and was gone.
Beate stood there and stared at the water, waiting to see it come up again, but she waited and she waited and no bird came. She began to be frightened, thinking the poor bird was drowned, when she saw it shoot up again far away almost in the middle of the lake.