Inger Johanne's lively doings

Oh, I am so angry with Otto, the woodcutter! for it was all his fault. Just because he was cross over Father’s having bought so much green wood, he had to——Well, I’m going to tell you all about it.

A better theater than our woodshed is not to be found in the whole town. Emil Rasmussen’s hall, where all the traveling actors play, can’t come up to our woodshed, that is certain. Of course I mean in the summer when there isn’t any wood there.

The little platform over in the corner, where the heavy old baby-carriage stands and old boxes and all the other rubbish, is the most magnificent stage any one could wish; and the long, narrow woodshed is a fine place for the spectators. There is also a dressing-room for the actors in the old carriage-house. True, you have to creep through a hole rather high up in the wall to get in there from the woodshed, but that is a small matter. What is worse is that a box of red ochre stands right under the hole and there’s always danger of falling into it. Except for that the carriage-house is a capital dressing-room.

There are no windows in the woodshed. When we shut the door, the only light is what comes through cracks and holes and sifts down between the tiles in the roof; but there are so many cracks and openings that there is more than enough light, anyway.

All the year round, Otto, the woodcutter, stands in the woodshed with sawdust in his hair and chops and saws with his rough purplish hands.

I often sit on a chopping-block near him and tell him fairy tales that I invent myself. Little reward do I get for my trouble, for Otto says never a word about my stories, though I make them as exciting as ever I can.

Well, once we girls decided that we would act a play.

“Warburg’s Company” had just been in town and played “Cousin Lottie” and “Adventures on a Walking Tour.” We had had free tickets every evening and I had sat in the front row and been in the seventh heaven of ecstasy.

Oh, you should have seen Warburg! Such eyes! Such a beautiful nose! And he spoke so charmingly! All the girls in our class went to the wharf to see him off when he left town, and Karen Jensen cried because she would not see him any more. She will not own up now that she cried, but I distinctly saw tears shining in her eyes.

It was when we went home from the wharf that time, that we decided we would act a play. There were Massa, Mina, Karen, Lolla, and I. We should need Karsten, but not any of the other boys,—they are all so disgusting nowadays. They whistle through keys and laugh and whisper when we go past them, and I call such behavior disgusting.

But we must have Karsten, because he sings so charmingly. His voice is so clear, so clear! When he sings:

it always makes the shivers go down my back; and old Miss Weyergang says that is a sign of the “highest artistic enjoyment” any one can have. Miss Weyergang was in Berlin once and heard “Lucca” sing, and she felt as if one pail of cold water after another were emptied over her; and nothing could have been more delightful, Miss Weyergang says.

So we must have Karsten. I can’t sing a bit. When I try to take a high note, there comes out the queerest sound. It is like the noise Karsten makes when I have shut him in the big empty meal-chest, and he screeches so frightfully from inside there.

But if you imagine Karsten is willing to help us with our performance, you make a great mistake.

“Do you think I will come and play with you girls? Be the only boy? No, thank you. Perhaps you can get such a girl-boy as Peter, the dean’s son, to do that, but not me. Very likely you’d dress me up as you used to when I was little. Humph! No, indeed. I’m a chap who has outgrown all that sort of thing.”

Well, this was going to cost us dear. To try to force Karsten would be of no use. We must coax him.

“If you will be in our theatricals, Karsten, I’ll rip off the two big buttons from the back of my winter coat and give them to you; crocheted buttons, you know.”

“We-ell, you’ll have to give me the two that are on the front of the coat, too.”

“Yes, yes; but then you must sing four times,—once for each button.”

Karsten grumbled a little at this, but Massa promised him a cornucopia full of plums from their shop, and so he gave in.

At school the next day, off in a corner of the class-room, we wrote the program. All the other girls crowded about us, wishing to know what the secret was. Massa and I stood in front and pushed them away, while behind us Mina and Karen wrote as fast as they could on the program. Such an excitement!

The principal came to the door, displeased at the noise; and Anna Brynildsen went and tattled, saying that I had pulled Kima Pirk’s hair. Well, it was true that I had clutched Kima by that red-brown hair of hers, but it was purely in self-defense, for Kima is much stronger than I.

At last the program was all written out. Here it is:

FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE GIOJA COMPANY

In the Judge’s Woodshed

Saturday, the 12th

1. Ja, vi elsker - Sung by Young Gioja

(That was Karsten.)

2. Declamation - - Miss Ella Gioja

(That was I.)

3. The Play, “Cousin Lottie.” Freely rendered from memory. By the whole Gioja Company.

4. “The Wild Duck Swims in Silence,” Young Gioja

5. Perhaps two extra numbers.

Entrance fee: What you please, but not less than one öre for each person.

It was certainly a magnificent program and a great deal for the money. In the next recess we put the program up on the wall so that every one could see it. They all said they would come.

Right after dinner on Saturday Mina and I cleared up the woodshed. You may well believe we worked hard. Chopping-blocks, boards, shavings, axes, and saws,—away into the corners with them all. We swept and swept and arranged and rearranged; but we made it look awfully nice, you may depend upon that.

We wouldn’t try to have scenery or “wings.” To fix up such theater contrivances is tremendously troublesome. No, we could creep in and out of the hole in the wall; that was much more convenient.

When it came to the point, Karsten was determined that he would not dress in costume, and of course he must, or it wouldn’t be like a real theater.

More coaxing of Karsten, a promise of another button from my winter coat, and a very rare Rio Janeiro stamp,—and at last he yielded. We took off his jacket, put a red scarf over one shoulder, slanting down to his waist, and set an old peaked felt hat on his head. His face was awfully red and angry,—he hated the whole thing, you see,—but he couldn’t resist that rare Rio Janeiro stamp.

Now the spectators began to come. We peeped through the hole to see them, and my goodness! how quickly the woodshed was filled! Pshaw! There were the boys, Nils and Anton and Ezekiel and all. Ugh! Massa stood at the door and took the money and I saw her shove some boys out who were trying to get in without paying.

It was five o’clock, the time for the performance to begin.

I rang a little cow-bell and Karsten crept through the hole in the wall in full costume. I followed him with an accordion for I was to play an accompaniment, you see. I can’t play the accordion very well but I hoped I might get along all right, nevertheless.

“Ja, vi elsker,” began Karsten, and I accompanied him as well as I could but he sang faster than I played, so I kept several notes behind him.

“You’re playing wrong,” said Karsten, stopping short in the song.

“I’m not, either. We’ll soon get together. You just keep on singing.”

We went at it again.

“If you can’t play properly I won’t sing any more,” said Karsten after a few more notes.

“Oh, you horrid thing! Keep on singing. I’ll catch up.”

But Karsten sprang at me and thumped me over the head two or three times. I grabbed him by both ears but he wrenched himself away. There was a roar of laughter throughout the whole woodshed, and the boys shouted, “Bravo! Bravo!”

O pshaw!

Karsten had already clambered back through the hole. I saw only his legs when I turned around. Under the circumstances, there was nothing for me to do but to creep after him.

In the woodshed, the spectators whistled through their fingers, shouted and screeched. After draping a black shawl over my head I again made my entrée in as dignified a manner as was possible through the hole.

Until the very moment I stepped forward on the stage, I was in the most horrible uncertainty as to what I should recite. It was impossible for me to decide whether it should be “Terje Vigen,” or “The Church Clock in Farum,” or “Little squirrel sat,” or what. The room was now still as death.

“Ahem! h’m!” I kept clearing my throat.

O dear me! Which poem should I choose?

But of all things in the world! There, at the woodshed door, stood Otto, the woodcutter, looking frightfully cross.

“What’s all this?” he called in a rough, angry voice.

I saw danger ahead, and spoke from the stage as mildly and soothingly as I could.

“This is a theater, Otto. We’re acting—having awfully good fun.” Almost before I had finished speaking, the spectators shouted in chorus:

“Theater, Otto! Theater!” and rushed at him, snatching at his jacket from behind, while Nils set up a blood-curdling Indian howl, such as only he can give; and everything was in a hullabaloo in no time.

Suddenly I saw Otto stride over to a heap of wood in the corner and grab a stick.

“Such trash! Such foolishness!” he shouted, swinging the stick in the air. “There must be a stop put to this, I tell you! Such goings on in a regular woodshed! Out with you!” He was like a furious savage.

“Look out! He harms people when he is so angry,” shouted Karsten from the hole.

All the spectators ran for the door, tumbling and scrambling over each other. I retired as hastily as possible through the hole, and darted out of the carriage-house door; and up the hill sprang spectators and actors in a wild rush.

All the rest of the day Otto went rummaging and ransacking around in the woodshed and scolding over wicked children, the foolishness of the world, and the misery of having green wood to cut up.

He was in a bad humor over the affair the whole summer, and will surely never forget it.

The next day at school, all the spectators came to us and wanted their money back. I thought that was mean, but, anyway, they didn’t get it; for of course we had immediately spent it on lemon-drops.