Bikku had cheeks as red and round as an apple, clear, blue eyes and hair as yellow as gold, the only gold to be found in the cabin. It was Bikku's round face which often filled the cottage window when anything passed on the road.
If you happen to come that way in Summer, you will see a gate across the road close to the cottage. You will have to stop your carriage, unless some one comes to open the gate.
But just wait a little, Bikku Matti will soon be there. There he is in the cabin door. How he runs to reach the gate in time, with his golden hair streaming in the wind. Now he is at the gate. If you have a penny, throw it to him, he rather expects it; but let it be a shiny one—he does not know the value of money and a penny, if bright and new, gives him as much pleasure as a silver coin. But take care not to throw your coin on the road before the horse and carriage have passed the gate; Bikku Matti has but little sense yet, and if he sees the bright penny in the road, he is likely to throw himself over it, allowing the gate to shut right in front of your horse.
On week-days Bikku Matti had only coarse bread and herring to eat, but on Sundays he had potatoes and sour milk. Still, on such food he throve and grew rounder and rounder as the years went by. He could not read much—some prayers and the ten commandments was about all.
But then Matti could do other things. He could stand on his head and turn somersaults where the grass was soft. He could skip stones over the smooth lake, while the grandmother was washing his shirt. He could drive a horse on the main road and ride the neighbor's horse to the watering trough, if someone walked beside him. He could tell the tracks of the blue-jay from those of the crow on the new-fallen snow, and wolf tracks he knew well. He could carve a boat or a sled out of chips of wood and could make horses and cows of pine cones with small twigs for legs. But, although Bikku possessed all these powers (and they were many for a small boy like Bikku), there were some necessary things he did not possess—he had no trousers. This may seem very strange to you, but it was after all not so strange. His grandparents were very poor, and then it was customary in that neighborhood for little boys to go about in plain cotton slips as Bikku did. But this was only on week-days; on Sundays the other boys were dressed in blouses and trousers. It was only Bikku who neither Sunday nor Monday wore anything but the little slip. But for a long time he did not know that trousers were a necessary piece of garment for a little boy. But see what happened.
One Sunday morning when the whole parish were to meet at the beach to go to church, Bikku declared that he was going too. "That will never do, dear child," said Grandmother.
"Why not?" asked Bikku Matti.
"You have no trousers." Bikku became very serious.
"I might have an old skirt to lend you," said Grandmother, "but then everybody would take you for a girl."
"But I am not a girl, I am a man," said Bikku Matti.