"I don't know for the life of me how I can ever explain to Morten Goosey-Gander that I cannot go home," thought he. "It would be better were I to leave him altogether. I could gather provisions enough for the winter, as well as the squirrels do, and if I were to live in a dark corner of the stable or the cow shed, I shouldn't freeze to death."
Just as he was thinking this, he heard a light rustle over his head, and a second later something which resembled a birch stump stood on the ground beside him.
The stump twisted and turned, and two bright dots on top of it glowed like coals of fire. It looked like some enchantment. However, the boy soon remarked that the stump had a hooked beak and big feather wreaths around its glowing eyes. Then he knew that this was no enchantment.
"It is a real pleasure to meet a living creature," remarked the boy.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me the name of this place, Mrs.
Brown Owl, and what sort of folk live here."
That evening, as on all other evenings, the owl had perched on a rung of the big ladder propped against the roof, from which she had looked down toward the gravel walks and grass plots, watching for rats. Very much to her surprise, not a single grayskin had appeared. She saw instead something that looked like a human being, but much, much smaller, moving about in the garden.
"That's the one who is scaring away the rats!" thought the owl. "What in the world can it be? It's not a squirrel, nor a kitten, nor a weasel," she observed. "I suppose that a bird who has lived on an old place like this as long as I have ought to know about everything in the world; but this is beyond my comprehension," she concluded.
She had been staring at the object that moved on the gravel path until her eyes burned. Finally curiosity got the better of her and she flew down to the ground to have a closer view of the stranger.
When the boy began to speak, the owl bent forward and looked him up and down.
"He has neither claws nor horns," she remarked to herself, "yet who knows but he may have a poisonous fang or some even more dangerous weapon. I must try to find out what he passes for before I venture to touch him."
"The place is called Mårbacka," said the owl, "and gentlefolk lived here once upon a time. But you, yourself, who are you?"