"Mother dear, how fine and cool the sea-breeze feels!" exclaimed Valdemar, as the little Sound steamer puffed along over the bright Baltic waves, past the big merchant-ships on the blue Sound, making many stops on its way up towards historic old Elsinore, the spot made famous by Shakespeare.
Uncle Oscar had departed three days before, going directly to the Jutland Park, to begin preparations for the entertaining of the thousands of loyal Danish-American visitors, expected to arrive in time for the Fourth celebration, and Fru Ingemann had given him her promise to meet him there, with the three children, for that great event.
For it had not taken Fru Ingemann long to decide that Uncle Oscar's plan for the summer was best. Summer days are long, but few, in Denmark,—the winters cold and stormy,—and Karen and Valdemar needed the trip as much as did Karl, she told herself. So the little party of four were already on their way north, to see for themselves all the wonders and beauties of Jutland, of which Karl's father had been telling them.
Once Fru Ingemann had decided, the days fairly flew. Valdemar wanted to start at once. But there was all the packing to be done—of things to be left, and things to be taken—and the flat to be closed for at least several months.
Karen, who had never before been farther from home than their own little villa up on the Strandvej, was overjoyed and danced busily about, saving her mother steps in a thousand different ways; while Valdemar and Karl surprised Fru Ingemann by getting out ladders, buckets and brushes, and nicely whitewashing all the flat windows, which was really being very useful indeed.
"Aunt Else, why is our steamer so awfully crowded with people? Are the Sound boats always like this?" asked Karl, who could hardly turn his chair around without knocking into some one.
"Yes, Karl, it's like this every year at 'Deer-Park-time.' The huge crowds are as eager as ourselves to leave Copenhagen with the first warm day and flee to Skoven,[18] for we Danes love our beautiful woods. With the first bursting of the beech-buds, everybody asks everybody else: 'Have you been in the woods yet?' And then by thousands—young and old—they flock to our beloved beech-woods. Those who cannot find room on the boats take the first train, or carriage, or cycle, or car, or even foot it—any way at all in order to reach the Deer Park, for that is where most of them go. After we make a stop there, we shall have plenty of room on our boat, Karl. Look! We are passing Charlottenlund, the Crown Prince's palace. You can see it up among those fine old trees."
"Then, Aunt Else," asked Karl, "isn't 'Deer-Park-time' something like our American 'Indian Summer,' only that it comes in the spring? It's your finest part of spring, and our best part of fall, when every one wants to live out of doors. Isn't that it?"
"That's just right, Karl," laughed Fru Ingemann. "And a little Danish boy would feel almost as badly not to be taken to the beech-woods when 'Deer-Park-time' comes, as would a little English boy if he got no plum pudding on Christmas day, or a little Scotch boy without his currant bun on New Year's Day, or a nice little American boy like you, Karl, if he couldn't have any firecrackers for his Fourth of July celebration. But here we are stopping at the Deer Park now. Half the people are getting off."