Chapter V: Part 5

Mother did not scold us or laugh at us. She said that those who had died were so happy and so much better off in heaven that they would not wish to come back here.

And that is surely true. For, really, when you come to think of it, what pleasure could it be for an old customs officer to go wandering about in the dark up in a loft?

XVII

A SNOW FIGHT

I wonder if you ever knew anything to equal the wonderful winter weather we had that day. It had been snowing until all the mountains and rocks around our old house had vanished, and instead of them, there were only beautiful mounds so soft-looking that you wanted awfully to turn somersaults in them.

The day before, there had been a very slight thaw, but during the night everything was frozen hard again, and when the sun came out that morning, thousands and tens of thousands of diamonds were scattered everywhere, sparkling, glittering, flashing, so that the brightness hurt your eyes.

On the old trees down the hillside bits of frozen, glistening snow shone out against the blue sky; the sky was wonderfully blue that day, I remember.

How a sudden overwhelming gladness can sometimes take possession of one! Not necessarily because there is anything especial to be happy over. For that matter, such sudden joy can come simply because it is fine, bright weather, and can be so exciting that you want to shout at the top of your lungs, throw out your arms, or turn somersaults, just because it is so good to be alive!

Exactly that way did I feel the morning I am telling you about. Our month’s vacation had begun. I stood on the front steps with my hat and coat on, for I was going to see Massa and Mina, and I was in such high glee over nothing that I had a great mind to jump up into the shining air. But I controlled myself, for through the window of Father’s office I could see Policeman Weiby’s purple nose, and he would certainly think I was crazy if I behaved that way.

When it is frightfully icy on the hill Policeman Weiby always wears boots with sharp nails on the soles when he comes up to see Father. Once inside the house the dumpy old policeman lifts first one foot and then the other so that the nails won’t go into the floor and fasten him there. My! I wish that might happen some day!

I buttoned my light brown gloves very nicely,—they go away up over my wrists,—held my muff straight down, and pushed my chest out and my stomach in, as the grown-up ladies do when they walk about the street. Policeman Weiby probably had wit enough to see now that I was almost grown up.

A long steep slope with trees on both sides leads up to our house. At the bottom of the hill Karsten was toiling and struggling with a great big box which he kept turning over and over so as to get it up the icy hill which was smooth as glass.

The ear-tabs on his fur cap were unfastened and stuck straight out in the air, and his ears, fiery red, looked like two big handles. With his thick fur cap and his hard work, he was dripping with sweat; and on his hands he had big white mittens that were frozen stiff.

“Come and help me,” he called.

I looked at my light brown, tight-fitting gloves.

“No, I thank you,” I said.

“You ought to see what fun it is to coast down on this box; it bumps and makes such a rattlety-bang noise—it’s awfully jolly.”

I suddenly had a burning desire to try this sport, forgot completely that the chest should be held out and the stomach in, took good hold of the box and pulled,—and there it was, up the hill. Then Karsten sat on the front of the box, I back of him and down the hill we went.

It might well be said that we bumped and thumped along. I felt as if I were being shaken to pieces, especially where the road turned at an angle half-way down the hill. Whether that turn caused it or not, smash went the box and thud! Out I tumbled on one side, Karsten on the other, while the remains of the box sped down and hit against Madam Land’s woodshed with a violent whack. My hands had struck the road with such force that both my light brown gloves had burst right across the middle of the palm and my left knee had such a horrid pain in it that I could scarcely get up.

The red-cheeked old woodchopper came out of Madam Land’s woodshed, hitching up his trousers.

“Did she fall off?” he asked. I did not deign to answer him.

Karsten was furious.

“It was your fault, you are so heavy and clumsy; and now the box is smashed that we were to use this afternoon in the snow-fight.”

“A fight? With whom?”

“With the boys at Tangen, of course. Why should they have that grand big coast all to themselves? We boys from the town never go there with a sled without their coming at us and hitting us; and we have only this miserable little hill to coast on.”

“Miserable little hill? This?”

“Yes, I call it a miserable little hill to coast down when Madam Land’s woodshed is right at the foot, blocking the way so that you have to twist your legs off, almost, to steer around on to the church green. But we have had a council of war, and this afternoon we shall thrash those Tangen boys thoroughly and take the hill for our use.”

This sounded frightfully interesting.

“What time are you going to fight?”

“Oh, you needn’t think that we’ll have you girls with us. You may be mighty sure we won’t.”

Karsten always pretends that he knows everything the bigger boys plan among themselves. As a matter of fact, they simply order him around as much as they please, but he will never acknowledge that.

“We were going to have that box to put our balls in,—snowballs, you know. We were going to make lots of them right after dinner, and then drag the box full of snowballs through Main Street and up Back Gorge and there we would be—right behind Tangen in a jiffy.”

I limped up the hill with my bruised knee aching, but I determined that I would go out to Tangen that afternoon to see the snow-fight, no matter how painful my knee was.

In the living-room all through the noon-hour I could hear Karsten in the woodshed, pounding and hammering at the box. Naturally I had wormed out of him that the fight was to begin at half-past three precisely.

I said nothing about having hurt my knee, and a little past three o’clock went down to the town after Massa and Mina. Yes, indeed, they were crazy to go to the fight, even if the boys didn’t want us; and we knew a short cut through Terkelsen’s garden, so off we ran.

By this short cut, we reached the top of the Tangen hill in no time. Oh, but it was a splendid hill! Very steep to begin with, so that it gave you a great send-off—tremendous speed at the start—then a long, long even stretch. You sometimes go as far as away out to Landvigen; but it is only our old blue sled “Seagull” and Nils Trap’s “Racer” that go that distance. That is because they are the best sleds in town.

Only very poor people live at Tangen, pilots and fishermen and laborers. The small houses are scattered about irregularly, one little hut on a height, and another in a hollow.

The whole hill was swarming with children that day,—boys and girls, big and little, and the air rang with their shouting and laughter and jollity. Not many of the children had real sleds; they coasted mostly on a long board, six or eight of them on it at a time. What of that? Hey hurrah! how they went! Some stood on skiis, the kind they make themselves out of barrel-hoops. They whizzed down the hill, bow-legged, bent way over, but they kept on their feet, anyway.

One child had a forlorn sled with a broken runner; and far below on the slope a wee little boy with a kerchief tied round his head, was dragging a stick of wood after him by a string. That was his sled.

None of our boys were to be seen yet. Our appearance on the hill caused great astonishment. Those who were coming up stood still, whispered together and went a little to one side. At that moment a big sailor boy came up—a regular broad-shouldered square-built fellow.

“Come, now!” he shouted to us. “What are you staying around here for? We have a right to coast down our own hill even if some elegant city flies stand and look at us.” His voice was changing, and he talked as loud as if he were in the worst kind of a storm at sea.

At that moment Nils Trap’s crooked nose appeared from behind the slope, and there were the boys, Angemal Terkelsen, Jens Stub, Peter, the dean’s son, Axel Wasserfall, and a whole bunch of boys besides. I saw Karsten bringing up the rear with the box heaping full of snowballs. Ugh! I almost had palpitation of the heart at the thought of what was coming but I couldn’t bear to leave.

“What do you want?” asked the young sailor.

“We want this slope to coast on,” said Axel Wasserfall. “You must pack yourselves off, every one of you, or——”

The young sailor had come close up to Axel, turning sideways and holding his arms out as boys do when they wish to pick a quarrel with any one, and staring the whole time straight into Axel’s eyes.

“Pack yourselves off, did you say? Pack yourselves off? I’ll give you ‘pack yourselves’—mass of herring-bones that you are!”

And before Axel could catch his breath, the young sailor’s fist struck him in the chest, and he was lying in the snowdrift with the sailor over him; but at the same instant Nils Trap and Angemal Terkelsen jumped on the sailor’s back. Then there was such a tussle that the snow flew in all directions.

A crowd of Tangen boys came storming up the hill, but now Karsten and the rear-guard pressed forward with the snowballs.

Massa, Mina, and I were thoroughly scared and went off to one side. The air was filled with the fast-flying icy snowballs, which hurt wherever they hit, as I myself can bear witness, for one hit me on the cheek and I had to hold my handkerchief there the whole time, it hurt me so much.

My, but it was exciting! They shouted and they screamed; they did not keep to the coast any longer, but struggled and fought out in the deep snow beside the road while fast as ever, without a pause, came the snowballs from the rear-guard whistling past one’s ears.

The women from the houses around flocked out on their stone steps with babies in their arms and kept calling out something to which no one listened.

Our boys had naturally the better position the whole time, for they stood on the hilltop and threw their snowballs down, while the Tangen boys stood below and had to throw theirs up. It was not many minutes before the Tangen boys had to take to their heels and run for shelter among the houses.

One and another lonely snowball still came whizzing up in a long curve, but it was easy to see that the Tangen boys felt themselves beaten.

Axel and Ludvig on our old broad “Seagull” coasted down first; and after them the others in a long row. My! how they laughed and shouted.

Angemal Terkelsen threw himself on his stomach on a sled—he always wants to be so bold—and Jens Stub sat astride his back.

Peter, the dean’s son, started off with his flat red sled. It was made in the country and goes so slowly that the other boys call it the “Snail.” Then Peter gets offended, for he is the kind of boy who never gets angry, but only offended.

But in the midst of all the fun and hurrahing, I began to hear a pitiful sound of crying. When I looked about, I found it came from the little boy with the kerchief on his head, the child I had noticed dragging a stick of wood by a string. It was Tollef, our washerwoman’s little boy.

A snowball had hit him in the eye, he had lost his stick of wood, and he was crying and crying. He knocked on the door of a little house, but his mother had gone out and the door was locked.

In the house next to the one outside of which Tollef stood crying, lived a man whom the whole town called Jack-of-all-trades, because he fixed lamps, soldered old teakettles, and mended all sorts of things. He was a little, grimy man and was now standing out on his front steps.

“Will you take away even this little bit of pleasure from the poor folks’ children?” asked Jack-of-all-trades. He looked at our boys laughing and shouting as they coasted down the long hill. His black eyes flashed and I came pretty near being afraid of him as I stood there. And all at once it struck me what a shame it was and what a horrid, mean thing we had done when we drove those poverty-stricken children from that hill of theirs. I rushed to the snowball box, tipped it over and trampled what snowballs there were left into the snow with all my might.

I remember that I began to cry when I got home; I told Mother that my knee pained me from the knock it got when I coasted on the box, and that was true; but really my crying was more because of what Jack-of-all-trades had said, and because we had spoiled the fun of poor little bow-legged Tollef.

However, the Tangen boys got their hill back again before long, you may be sure of that! And I’m glad to say that our boys have let them alone ever since.

XVIII

A CHRISTMAS VISIT

A few days before Christmas, whether because Mother was sick or for some other reason, it was decided that Karsten and I should be sent to the Parsonage for a short visit. Peter Olsen, from Uncle’s parish, was just then in town, so a message was sent to him, asking if he would take us with him in his sleigh. All waters were frozen, even the fjord, so we could drive the whole distance.

Indeed, Peter Olsen had not the least objection to taking us, and late in the evening two days before Christmas the sleigh and two big horses stood before our door. I always like to sit where I can see the horses, so I sat in front with the driver and Karsten sat behind with Peter Olsen.

Karsten was so stuffed out with wraps that people in town, as I heard later, thought that he was Peter’s wife. For a long time afterward, when I wished to tease Karsten, I would call him Mrs. Peter Olsen, for that made him furious.

We drove along in the moonlight over hills and frozen ponds, and through groves where the branches hung so low that they hit our heads and sent an avalanche of soft wet snow down our necks.

On Sandy-point fjord, the moonlight shed its silver radiance over the ice; and the ice gave forth a hollow roaring sound under the big sleigh and the heavy feet of the horses. Peter Olsen was known as a regular dare-devil on the ice but perhaps even he felt that the fjord was not wholly to be trusted that night, for all at once he stood up to his full height in the sleigh, struck out with his arms and called loudly to the horses in both German and French.

“_Allons!_” shouted Peter with all the power of his lungs. His red, curly beard showed clearly in the moonlight. Sharp particles of frozen snow whizzed about our ears; and bits of ice and lumps of snow were thrown upon us as the horses dashed swiftly along. Now we were nearing the shore. Peter called to the driver that he must throw himself out of the sleigh to lighten it; he himself, still standing upright, seized the reins in his powerful hands. The ice groaned and creaked. Peter kept on shouting to the horses. There! At last they had firm ground under their feet. The driver came trudging along, and Peter Olsen turned to look back at the breaking ice.

“Well! We managed that fine!” said he, chuckling and laughing.

Farther up the slope, we overtook a little schoolmaster who was allowed to stand on the runners at the back of the sleigh. The road was only a wood-road and very rough with naked tree-roots, stones and lumps of ice.

“This isn’t as flat as a pancake, is it?” remarked the little schoolmaster.

Far off in the forest some beast gave an ugly howl. Peter said it was a wolf, but I was not the least bit scared. It was impossible to be afraid, when you were with Peter Olsen, so stout and strong and trustworthy.

At a sharp turn in the road, the little schoolmaster fell off his perch on the runners of the sleigh and lay flat in the road.

“Now we have discharged the teacher,” said Peter Olsen. We had to wait quite a while in the darkness under the trees before he caught up with us.

Nothing a bit interesting happened during the rest of the long ride, and at half-past twelve we drew up at the Parsonage.

I had rejoiced at the prospect of going to the Parsonage at Christmas time, but now that I was there, it wasn’t just as I had expected it to be.

It looked so altogether different in winter from what it did in summer,—so old and gray, almost hidden in snow, and as if crouching under the hill. In the second story where the rooms were not used in winter, all the windows were entirely covered with white frost. The courtyard was one expanse of ice, with narrow black paths, where ashes had been strewn, leading from one building to another. The maids stepped cautiously along these ash paths, but even so, one or another maid would suddenly sit down with a resounding thwack.

Great-Aunt was at the door and seemed glad enough to see us. She was pretty good to us children, though she never liked any of our fun or play, no matter what it was. Karsten was her especial favorite. He amused her mightily because he exaggerated so much. She would listen with a most serious face to Karsten’s yarns.

“We have a cat at home,” Karsten told her, “that is the wickedest cat in the whole town. No other cat dares come into our yard, for our cat either bites its head off or kills it at once.”

“That must be a bad cat,” said Great-Aunt.

“Yes, and it is so big, too. Why, really, if you see it a little way off, you would think it was a calf; yes, some have thought it was a cow.”

“Ugh! That must be a horrid town to live in, with such cats around,” said Great-Aunt. “But I suppose there are some big, strong men there, too.”

“Oh, yes! You may be sure of that. One man at home is so strong that he carried a barrel of wheat, full of water besides, up a hill that was as steep as the wall of this room.”

That is the way Karsten would go on, and Great-Aunt was tremendously amused by it.

But now I must tell you how things went during Christmas tide.

The whole place was in perfect order, freshly cleaned from cellar to attic, shining and beautiful. When we came down-stairs in the morning, the regular Christmas Eve dinner was already under way. I sat on the kitchen bench and ate various Christmas goodies.

Later, I went to the barn and stable and to see the pigs and the poultry.

When evening came, it wasn’t as cosy and delightful as Christmas Eve at home always is, but it wasn’t so bad, after all. Karsten never behaves himself anything extra when he is away from home, and he didn’t this time. First, he slept while Uncle preached, and nodded so that he nearly fell off his chair several times. Then he was sick in the night because he had eaten too much, as he has done every single Christmas as far back as I can remember.

Uncle gave me a gold-piece,—an English sovereign. Aunt Magda gave me a religious book in red binding and with gilt edges that will look very bright and handsome in my bookcase; and Great-Aunt gave me a charming little brooch of silver filigree.

It was really a pleasant Christmas Eve, after all; but when I had gone to bed, I lay awake and thought of Mother, and at last I couldn’t help crying. I smothered my crying in the blankets, however, so that Karsten should not hear, for if he heard me crying, he would begin; and he roars so when he cries that he would have aroused the whole house.

Well, what do you think? On Christmas morning it rained! Yes, a fine drizzling rain with fog out over the sea and up on the hill. When the church bells rang, they sounded like big muffled cow-bells through the fog. From the shore came the church folk, walking slowly in large groups. They did not go into the church but stood out in the drizzling rain, by the door or by the stone wall of the churchyard, waiting for the minister to go in first.

Uncle in his cassock was walking up and down the living-room floor talking with the deacon. The deacon was a big, fat man in a frock coat that was too narrow for him and pinched at the armholes. Everything about Deacon Vebjornsen was unusually large—except his frock coat. His mouth was big, his smile was big and his neck was very, very big.

“Well, well!” said Uncle.

“Well, well! Well, well!” said the deacon.

The church in another part of the parish was being repaired, so the people from there came to the service in Uncle’s church in Sandvaag. Their deacon came, too, and Deacon Vebjornsen and he tried to see which could sing loudest. Neither would give up. Never in my life have I seen or heard any one sing as the two deacons did that Christmas day in Sandvaag church. They stood erect in the pew, both with their mouths stretched wide open. I expected every minute that they would burst something inside of them.

Above the piercing sounds the two deacons made, came Uncle’s dear voice from the pulpit, sweet and mellow and kind.

It made me think of Mother, and I had to try with all my might to keep from crying. I couldn’t bear that any one should see me crying in church.

Uncle invited ever so many to go to the Parsonage to dinner; —two sailors with their wives, three school-teachers and a widow with three children. Great-Aunt stood out in the kitchen, crimson in the face, and awfully provoked at Uncle.

“Did you ever see such a man?” she burst out. “He goes and invites eleven strangers to dinner without my having any idea of it; and the roast will be too small. The three teachers are equal to eating up all the princess pudding, just themselves alone, and—oh, I wish I were thirty feet under ground!—But I could have told you beforehand that this would happen. I could have told you!”

Aunt Magda had to go out to comfort her, and it took much coaxing to get Great-Aunt to go to the dinner-table.

“There are people enough there already,” she said.

When she was at the table she kept urging and insisting that the three teachers should eat more and more of the French beans for she knew there were plenty of them.

I should like to tell you that we had a pleasant time after dinner that Christmas Day; but to tell the plain truth, I was perfectly bored.

The ladies sat in the big parlor, drank coffee and talked old-granny fashion about every possible kind of sickness; so I knew it would be much pleasanter in the sitting-room with Uncle and the sailors and the three teachers. I had just sat down in there to listen to them when Aunt Magda came and asked me to go and amuse the strange little boys.

Karsten and the oldest boy were out on the front steps.

“Have you good muscle in your arms?” asked Karsten.

“No, I don’t think so,” answered the strange boy.

“Look here,—here you can see”—Karsten stretched out his arm. “That’s the way an arm should be, the muscle standing up in a curve; feel of this and you’ll know what muscle is.”

The boy felt of Karsten’s arm.

“You feel of it, too,” said Karsten to the two smaller boys. “Exactly like lignum vitæ, and lignum vitæ is the hardest thing in the world.”

All the boys admired Karsten’s muscle tremendously, that was easy to see.

It still rained steadily, so I suggested that we go into the inner hall. Oh, that dear old Parsonage hall, where there was always a smell of old cheese and such things. Yes, the front hall smelled of rose-leaves, but the inner hall of old cheese. In the front hall, we bowed and curtsied nicely and were well-behaved; but in the other hall we played and romped and had great fun.

For the moment, I couldn’t think of anything to do there but slide down the banisters. You know what jolly fun that is, sliding so frightfully fast, especially where the banister curves. I went ahead up the stairs, the four boys after me, away up to the attic, then whizz! down the banisters! The whole troop tramped up the stairs again, whizz! down again. My! this was getting to be great fun—there stood Great-Aunt at the door.

“Are you crazy, you children? Will you tear the house down over our heads? Out with you! Out, I say.”

So there we were. What should we do now?

“Let’s put up a swing in the woodshed,” I suggested.

The others agreed instantly. Karsten ran to the harness-room to get a rope. I climbed up one side of the woodshed and Karsten the other; we tied and knotted the rope around a beam and made a perfectly splendid swing. When we swung very high, we went through the doorway right out into the air. To be so awfully high up gave me a tickle-y feeling in my stomach, but I liked it.

We took turns. The littlest boy was afraid. He clung tight to the rope and screamed!

“Fie for shame! A boy that doesn’t dare to swing!” I said. So he got into the swing and we pushed him; but suddenly, when he was at the very highest, he let go and fell whack! on the woodshed floor.

I was terribly scared, for it was really my fault that he had got into the swing. He sobbed and cried, poor little thing, and had a big blue bump on his forehead. I picked up a lump of ice and held it to the bump. The other children kept on swinging as high as they could.

Just then Great-Aunt appeared, with a purple handkerchief over her head.

“There! Didn’t I know there was something crazy going on again? It would be a fine thing if you made all the wood here tumble down on you, wouldn’t it? And he has fallen and hurt himself. Well, it is a wonder to me that you are all alive as yet. Take that down,” concluded Great-Aunt in her crossest tone. “Take that swing down this moment, Inger Johanne.” Great-Aunt turned to me. “For it is certainly you who are responsible for this whole business.” Karsten and I had to climb and untie the rope.

“And now come with me into the big parlor, every one of you,” said Great-Aunt. “I can’t be easy a minute unless I have you sitting right under my eyes.”

Well! There we had to sit, five of us in a row, as stiff as posts the whole long afternoon. Ugh! how angry I was at Great-Aunt.

The next day there was service in the church again, and the two deacons tried as hard as ever to out-sing each other; but Uncle did not invite any one home to dinner. I suppose he didn’t wish to displease Great-Aunt again.

“There now! To-day he might have invited half the town,” said Great-Aunt, “for to-day I have plenty of food.”

It rained and it rained. What in the world should Karsten and I do? Slide down the banisters we mustn’t, swing in the woodshed we mustn’t; but to lay a board across the chopping block and play seesaw, surely there could be no harm in that.

We found a board and seesawed up and down, up and down, until Nella, the parlor maid, came out with the message that we were to stop. We might pinch our fingers, Great-Aunt thought!

“Well, let’s go and jump in the hay in the barn,” suggested Karsten. “That’s awfully good fun.”

I had just got Karsten in the hay under me and heaped so much hay on top of him that he could scarcely breathe, when we heard Aunt Magda’s sweet, gentle voice from the barn door.

“Oh, you dear, dear children! Don’t do that! Great-Aunt says that you might lose a pin in the hay that a cow would eat, and the pin might stick in her insides. Come, dears, be good children and don’t play in the hay any more.”

“Oh, no, Aunt Magda! Don’t say that. Just come and see what fun it is. I haven’t a single pin about me, Aunt Magda.”

“Well, but you might lose a button, Great-Aunt says, and a cow might get it in her throat and choke on it; so come now, like good children.”

Of course there was nothing else to do. Out of the hay must we come. Karsten was perfectly desperate with boredom.

“I’m going home,” he said. “I won’t stay here any longer, and I’m never, never in the world coming here again. They can eat their good food themselves for all of me.”

I wouldn’t tell Karsten so, but I felt just as he did; and every night when I had gone to bed, I had a dreadful longing for home. I felt as if something heavy lay on my heart and clutched it. Why are they so afraid and won’t let us do anything? How queer old people are! When I am old I am not going to be like Great-Aunt, I’m sure of that.

We had been at the Parsonage four days and still had to stay over Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I didn’t believe I should ever see Father and Mother again. And people said it was so pleasant to go visiting! No, it wasn’t; it was horrid, it was very, very sad. I thought that if I ever got home again,—_if_ I ever did,—I’d never, never go away from Father and Mother any more.

* * * * *

When I awoke next morning and saw Nella at my bedside with a tray of coffee and little cakes, I found myself, strangely enough, in much better spirits. It was rather pleasant, after all, to go visiting.

“What kind of weather is it, Nella?”

“Delightful and warm,” said Nella.

Karsten and I would rather have had good ice for skating and hard snow for coasting, so we couldn’t agree with Nella that the weather was delightful when the wind was warm and the roofs dripping.

However, we were in brilliant good humor that morning, Karsten and I. If I had imagined then what the day would bring——

Great-Aunt had not forbidden us to go into the sheep-barn, and so we were there early and late. How cosy and snug it is in a sheep-barn and what a good smell there is of sheep’s wool and dry leaves and hay!

Almost all the sheep were afraid of us, and they crowded themselves together and pushed and squeezed each other away off to a corner, looking at us with innocent eyes. There was just one sheep that was not afraid of people and liked to be petted. It squeezed itself up against me and lay close beside me when I sat down. My! How I did love that sheep!

Before we went down there that morning, Karsten suggested that we get some boiled potatoes from those that had been cooked for breakfast and take them to the sheep. I thought this was an excellent idea. It happened that there was no one in the kitchen when I went in; I supplied myself with a heaping plateful of big potatoes and went my way.

When the sheep had once tasted the potatoes, I thought they had gone crazy. They jumped over each other, pushed and jammed and pressed themselves forward, trying to get at the plate. I held it high above my head. Oh-h! All the potatoes tumbled off and rolled among the sheep. They butted each other, scrambled for the potatoes, snatched and ate in haste.

“Oh, see that sheep of yours!” said Karsten suddenly. “How queerly it behaves! Did you ever see anything like it?”

I looked. Yes, I had to agree with him, that the sheep he pointed to, my dear pet sheep, was behaving in a most peculiar manner. It went backward round and round a couple of times with wide-open mouth; suddenly it fell on its side, kicked a little, stretched its legs out to their full length and then lay perfectly still.

Oh, how frightened I was!

“What is it, Karsten? What is the matter with it? Help me to get it up. Oh, my sweet, dear sheep! Go after the milkmaid, Karsten,” I said.

He was gone an eternity it seemed to me, but at last came back with the milkmaid.

“What have you done, child?” she asked in terror. “The sheep is dead. You’ll catch it from old Miss.” (She meant Great-Aunt.) “You gave it a whole potato and that stuck in its throat, you see, and choked it so it couldn’t breathe. O me! O me! What a misfortune!”

I ran out of the sheep-barn; Karsten was right at my heels and we rushed into the kitchen where Great-Aunt stood at the stove cooking something.

“Oh, Great-Aunt! I have killed a sheep with a potato!”

If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget how Great-Aunt looked as she turned towards me.

“There! Didn’t I know it would be so?” Words came at last. “Trouble-maker that you are! Why in the world did you come here? Children should stay at home, I think——”

I heard no more, for I ran out—ran I did not know where, but at last I found myself sitting in a dark corner of the barn behind the hay-cutter.

O dear! O dear! How horrid it was! I should never be happy again, never, never! Why did we have to come here this Christmas? Why did the sheep get the potato in its throat? I meant to give them all a treat. And now Uncle and Aunt Magda would be furiously angry with me, and perhaps Father and Mother would be too. I cried and sobbed as if my heart would break.

How long I sat there I do not know, but it must have been for hours. I heard them call me many times, but I kept still; the thought of seeing any one was unbearable.

Little by little my crying stopped and I began to follow a new train of thought. I would stay in this corner all my life—yes, and starve to death—perhaps steal out at night and get a little food—but no one should know that I lay in hiding here; and when many years later they found me behind the hay-cutter, lying dead with a tear-stained face—then horrid Great-Aunt would be sorry enough.

Suddenly I heard Aunt Magda’s voice right near me.

“Oh, my dear, blessed child! Are you lying here? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Are you very angry about the sheep, Auntie?”

“Oh, far from it! You didn’t mean to do any harm. Great-Aunt is very hasty, you know.”

“And Uncle?”

“Oh, Uncle will understand,” said Aunt Magda, comfortingly. “And now, my jewel, don’t think of it any more.”

Oh, how I loved Aunt Magda! How unspeakably, unspeakably! The whole afternoon I sat close beside her or followed her about. I would not leave her for an instant.

* * * * *

At last the day came for us to go home, traveling this time by the steamer.

Great-Aunt gave us a big package of fig-cakes and raisins and almonds, and when we said good-bye, she patted us on the shoulder and asked us to come again soon. So she wasn’t so bad, after all!

When the steamer reached our town, Karsten and I were the first on the wharf. We leaped up the hill to our home in just about one bound, and up the steps. We hadn’t time to shut the doors after us, but left them standing open all the way to Mother’s room. There sat Mother in an easy-chair, reaching out her arms to us.

“Oh, Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!” And Mother took us in her arms, pressing us close to her breast.

“Oh, my dear, dear children!”

* * * * *

There is nothing in the world so delightful as to come home.

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 119 Changed: we were tired of plashing
to: we were tired of splashing