WHAT HAPPENED

TO

INGER JOHANNE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I, Inger Johanne 11

I. Ourselves, Our Town, and Other Things 13

II. An Interrupted Celebration 31

III. My First Journey Alone 41

IV. What Happened One St. John's Day 59

V. Left Behind 70

VI. In the Meal Chest 86

VII. Pets: Particularly Carola-Carolus 93

VIII. Christmas Mumming 113

IX. Mother Brita's Grandchild 123

X. The Mason's Little Pigs 143

XI. Locked In 156

XII. At Goodfields 170

XIII. Oleana's Clock 179

XIV. A Trip to Goodfields Saeter 186

XV. Lost in the Forest 204

XVI. Traveling with a Billy-Goat 223

XVII. In School 239

XVIII. When the Circus Came 253

XIX. Moving 273

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mina and I hauled her up by the arms into the boat (page 22) Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The dean took Peter by the left ear and dragged him away 40

They just hauled and pulled me as hard as they could 68

She told me the whole story of her life 80

And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below! 110

The only pleasant thing was that there came a tremendously big heavy snowslide right down on the little shoemaker 124

She began to shriek and point and throw up her arms 152

And smashed a window-pane with it 166

"Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock" 184

How we wandered,—round and round, up and down, hither and thither! 208

The beautiful red cherries crackled in Billy-goat's mouth 236

I stood on the barn steps with a long whip 260

WHAT HAPPENED TO INGER JOHANNE

I, INGER JOHANNE

I have always heard grown people say that when you meet strangers and there is no one else to introduce you, it is highly proper and polite to introduce yourself. Uncle Karl says that polite people always get on in the world; and as I want dreadfully to do that, I will be polite and tell you who I am.

Everybody in our town knows me; and they call me "the Judge's Inger Johanne," because my father is the town judge, you see; and I am thirteen years old. So now you know me.

And just think! I am going to write a book! If you ask, "What about?" I shall have to say, "Nothing in particular," for I haven't a speck more to tell of than other girls thirteen years old have, except that queer things are always happening to me, somehow.

Probably it isn't easy to write a book when you have never done it before, especially when thoughts come galloping through your head as fast as they do through mine. Why, I think of a hundred things, while Peter, the dean's son, is thinking of one and a half! But, easy or not, since I, Inger Johanne, have set my heart on writing a book, write it I will, you may be sure; and now I begin in earnest.

CHAPTER I

OURSELVES, OUR TOWN, AND OTHER THINGS

Ourselves

There are four brothers and sisters of us at home, and as I am the eldest, it is natural that I should describe myself first. I am very tall and slim (Mother calls it "long and lanky"); and, sad to say, I have very large hands and very large feet. "My, what big feet!" our horrid old shoemaker always says when he measures me for a pair of new shoes. I feel like punching his tousled head for him as he kneels there taking my measure; for he has said that so often now that I am sick and tired of it.

My hair is in two long brown braids down my back. That is well enough, but my nose is too broad, I think; so sometimes when I sit and study I put a doll's clothespin on it to make it smaller; but when I take the clothespin off, my nose springs right out again; so there is no help for it, probably.

Why people say such a thing is a puzzle; but they all, especially the boys, do say that I am so self-important. I say I am not—not in the least—and I must surely know best about myself, now that I am as old as I am. But I ask you girls whether it is pleasant to have boys pull your braids, or call you "Ginger," or to have them stand and whistle and give cat-calls down by the garden wall, when they want you to come out. I have said that they must once for all understand that my braids must be let alone, that I will not be whistled for in that manner, and that I will come out when I am ready and not before. And then they call me self-important!

After me comes Karsten. He has a large, fair face, light hair, and big sticking-out ears. It is a shame to tease any one, but I do love to tease Karsten, for he gets so excited that he flushes scarlet out to the tips of his ears and looks awfully funny! Then he runs after me—which is, of course, just what I want—and if he catches me, gives me one or two good whacks; but usually we are the best of friends. Karsten likes to talk about wonderfully strong men and how much they can lift on their little finger with their arm stretched out; and he is great at exaggeration. People say I exaggerate and add a sauce to everything, but they ought to hear Karsten! Anyway, I don't exaggerate,—I only have a lively imagination.

After Karsten there is a skip of five years; then comes Olaug, who is still so little that she goes to a "baby school" to learn her letters, and the Catechism. I often go to fetch Olaug home, for it is awfully funny there. When Miss Einarsen, the teacher, and her sister say anything they do not wish the children to understand, they use P-speech: Can-pan you-pou talk-palk it-pit? I went there often on purpose to learn it, for it is so ignorant to know only one language. But now I know both Norwegian and P-speech. Olaug always remembers exactly the days when the school money is to be paid, for on those days each child who brings the money gets a lump of brown sugar. Once a year the minister comes to Miss Einarsen's to catechize the children; but Miss Einarsen always stands behind the one who is being questioned and whispers the right answer. "Oh, Teacher is telling, Teacher is telling!" the children say to each other. "Yes, I am telling," says Miss Einarsen. "How do you think you would get along if I didn't?" On examination days Miss Einarsen always treats to thin chocolate in tiny cups, and the children drink about six cups apiece! Well, that's how it is at Olaug's school.

After Olaug comes Karl, but he is only a little midget. He thinks he can reach the moon if he stands on a chair by the window and stretches his arms away up high. He is perfectly wild to get hold of the moon because he thinks it would roll about so beautifully on the floor.

Our Town

We live in a little town on the sea-coast. It is much more fun to live in a little town than a big one, for then you know every one of the boys and girls, and there are many more good places to play in; and all the sea besides. Oh, yes! I know very well that there are lots of small towns that do not lie by the sea. They must be horrid!

Think how we have the great ocean thundering in against the shore, wave after wave. Oh, it is delightful! Any one who has not seen that has missed a really beautiful sight. It is beautiful both in summer and winter; but I do believe it is most beautiful and wonderful in the time of the autumn storms. Go up on the hilltop some day in autumn, where the big beacon is, and look out over the sea! You have to hold on to your hat, hold on to your clothes, hold on to your body itself, almost. Whew-ew! the wind! How it blows! How it blows! And the whole ocean looks as if it were astir from the very bottom. Big black billows with broad white crests of foam come rolling, rolling, rolling in—one wave does not wait for the other. And how they break over the islands out where the lighthouse is! The lighthouse stands like a tall white ghost against the dark sea and the dark sky;—sinks behind an enormous wave, rises again, sinks and rises again. How swiftly the clouds fly! How the ocean seethes and roars! We hear it all over town, sobbing, roaring, thundering! Away in by the wharves of the market square the waters are all in a turmoil. The little boats rock and rock, and the big ships dip up and down. The wet rigging sparkles, the mooring chains strain and creak, and there is such a smell of salt in the air! You can almost taste the salt with your tongue.

In such weather the damaged ships come in. One autumn there came a Spanish steamship, with a green funnel and a white hull. It lay with almost its whole stern under water when the pilot from Krabbesund brought it in. That was jolly; not for the people on board,—it was anything but jolly for them,—but for us children.

When we choose, we go out into the harbor in boats and row round and round among the strange ships. At last, very likely, the sailors call out to us and ask us to come on board, and then it doesn't take us long to scramble up the ladder, you may be sure! On board, it is awfully jolly. Once a French skipper gave us some pineapple preserves; but generally we only get crackers. When the Spanish ship was in, the streets swarmed with foreign sailors, with long brown necks and burning black eyes. Then the old policeman, Mr. Weiby, strutted about, and sent Father long written reports about street rows and disturbances. The Spaniards didn't bother themselves a mite about old Weiby, puffing around with his chin high in the air!

Sometimes on summer afternoons when the water lies calm and shining, we slip off and borrow a boat (Mr. Terkelsen's, quite often) and go rowing around the island. Then, afterwards, we float about,—dabbling and splashing in the darkened water until evening comes on. Ah! that is pleasure!

An Adventure

One summer evening Massa Peckell, Mina Trap and I saved two people from drowning; and we were praised for it in the newspapers. Really it is most delightful to see your name in print! I should like ever so much to do something else that the papers would praise me for, but I don't know what it could be!

This is how it happened that time. We had borrowed old Terkelsen's boat and rowed quite a way out. From a wharf on one of the islands another boat laden with wood came towards us. The wood was in slabs and chips and was piled high fore and aft. Down between the piles sat two children rowing. As they came nearer we saw that it was Lisa and George, the lighthouse-keeper's children. Mina and I were rowing, but I was so much stronger that I kept rowing her round and round, so that we were laughing and having a jolly time. Probably George and Lisa were watching us and forgetting all about their top-heavy boat; for, the next thing we knew, both piles of wood, George and Lisa, and the boat were all upset in the water. It was a dreadful thing to see!

"We—we'll go ashore and get help!" shrieked Massa. Humph! A pretty time they would have if we did that! Mina and I had more sense, so we turned our boat quickly and were over to the spot in two or three strokes of the oars. The boat was completely capsized and the chips floated over the water as thick as a floor. But George and Lisa were nowhere to be seen!

Then you may believe that Mina and I yelled with all our might! You know how it sounds over the water. My! how we did shriek! It must have been heard all over town. I saw people away back on the wharves running to the water to see what was the matter.

Then, there bobbed Lisa's head up among the chips, and Mina and I hauled her up by the arms into the boat. Massa had to hang away over on the starboard so that our boat shouldn't upset, too. Old Terkelsen is always so mad when we take his boat without leave. I can't imagine, for the life of me, why he should get so provoked over it. We always bring it back just as good as ever! Massa and Mina and I have no desire, forsooth, to set out to sea through the Skagerak and sail away with it! But on that day it was fortunate that we had taken his boat, and not some miserable little thing belonging to anybody else.

As soon as Lisa got her breath, she cried out: "Oh! the chips! the chips!" But just then George's head appeared, and Mina and I made a grab for him; but he was so stupidly heavy that we couldn't pull him in; so we only held him fast and screamed and screamed. Out from the wharves and from the islands came ever so many boats and lots of people. Those minutes that we hung over the edge of that boat and held on with all our might to the half-drowned George, who was as heavy as lead—shall I ever forget? George was drawn up into another boat and they took us in tow. Lisa sat like a drowned rat and cried till she choked. Then Massa began to cry, too;—and so we came to the wharf.

For several days after the rescue I couldn't go into the street without people's stopping me and wanting a full account of how it all happened. Really, it is quite troublesome to be famous; but I like it pretty well, nevertheless.

When Mina and I met that stout, lighthouse-Lisa on the street next time, we couldn't imagine how we had ever been able to drag her into the boat! But you mustn't expect gratitude in this world. Many a time since then has Lisa come tiptoeing along after us on the street, tossing her head this way and that, mimicking us, to show how self-important we are! And that after we saved the stupid creature from drowning!

Our Home

We live up on a hill in a lovely old house. People call it an old rattletrap of a house, but that is nothing but envy because they don't live there themselves. There are big old elm-trees around the house which shade it and make the back part of the deep rooms quite dark. The rafters show overhead, and the floors rock up and down when you walk hard on them, just because they are so old. There is one place in the parlor floor where it rocks especially. When no one is in there except Karsten and myself, we often tramp with all our might where the floor rocks most, for we want dreadfully to see whether we can't break through into the cellar.

There are several gardens belonging to our house. One big garden has only plum-trees with slender trunks and a little cluster of branches and leaves high, high up. When I walk down there under the plum-trees, I often imagine that I am down in the tropics, wandering under palm-trees. I have a garden of my own, too. I wouldn't have mentioned it particularly if there weren't one remarkable fact about it. Really and truly, nothing will grow in it but that dark blue toad-flax—you know what that is. Every single spring I buy seeds with my pocket money, and plant and water and take care of them, but when summer comes there is nothing in the garden but great big toad-flax stalks all gone to seed. It is awfully tiresome, especially when they have such a horrid name.

Playmates

Now I think it is time to describe all of us boys and girls who play together, and whom I am going to tell about in my book.

There is Peter, the dean's son, with his sleepy brown eyes and freckles as big as barleycorns. Peter is a cowardly chap. He never has any opinion of his own. And if he had one he would never dare to stand by it if you contradicted him. He's terribly afraid of the cold, too, and goes about with a scarf wound around his neck, and mittens if a single snowflake falls. Still, Peter is very nice indeed; he does everything that I want him to.

Then there is my brother Karsten, but I've told you about him. He is a little younger than the rest of us.

Another boy is Ezekiel Weiby. He is fourteen years old and has an awfully narrow face—not much broader than a ruler. He is very clever and reads every sort of book. But when he is out with the rest of us, he wants us all to sit still and hear him tell about everything he has been reading. For a while that is very pleasant, but I get tired of it pretty soon, for I hate to sit still long at a time. That is a very funny thing. Other people get tired of walking or running about, but I can't stand it to sit still.

Nils Trap is the bravest of all the boys. He never wears an overcoat, but goes around with his hands in his pockets whistling a funny tune:

which you probably don't know. Nils Trap clambers like a cat up in the rigging of the vessels. Some people say that they have seen him lie out straight on the ball at the top of the big mast of the Palmerston and spin himself round. But others say that is a whopper, for the Palmerston is the biggest ship in town with the very highest masts. Perhaps he could lie and balance himself on top of it, but spin himself round! That he couldn't do if he tried till he was blue in the face.

Then there are Massa, and Mina, and I. Mina is Nils's sister and my best friend. She has a gold filling in one of her front teeth. Oh, if I could only have such a shining little spot as that in my teeth! Mine are only plain straight white ones and they look really dull beside hers.

Massa Peckell is plump and easy-going. She thinks the most beautiful thing is to be pale and thin. She heard that it would give you a delicate pale skin if you drank vinegar and ate rice soup, so she tried it as hard as she could. But her beauty-cure only gave her the stomach-ache. Her fat, red cheeks are just like Baldwin apples still.

Every day, summer and winter, we are together, all of us that I have written about here. In summer there is a lot of fun to be had everywhere, but especially on the delightful hill back of our house—(I will tell you all about that hill some other time),—but in winter, humph! What can girls and boys do in such horrid mild winters as we are now having, I should really like to know! Last year we had no snow to speak of, and here it is now after New Year's and I haven't yet, to my recollection, seen a single snowflake which didn't melt in five minutes, or any ice that didn't break through as soon as you stamped your heel on it. If I could only make a journey to the North Pole and do what I wanted to there, I should send down some lovely soft snow-drifts and some smooth blue glistening ice in a jiffy, to all the boys and girls who are wishing for them day after day.

In the meantime I am glad that I have begun to write this book in winter, otherwise I should be bored to death.

Of course we go out-of-doors now too, even though the mild weather is disgusting; but when it storms as hard as it did in the autumn, making the old elm-trees crash and swish so that we can scarcely hear ourselves talk, then it is not comfortable to play out-of-doors, I assure you. At such times we often shut ourselves up in the little room over the wood-shed. There is nothing up there but a keg of red ochre which we paint ourselves with, but really we have lots of fun there, nevertheless.

Ezekiel always seizes the chance to give a lecture in the wood-shed, and his words gush out like water from a fountain. When I get tired of it, I sneak around behind him and give him a little English punch in the back, for I am very clever at boxing, you must know. "Come on! Can you use your fists like an Englishman?" And then I roll my hands round very fast, just as I have seen the English sailors do, and give him a quick punch in the stomach with my fist.

Ezekiel squirms about like a worm, and defends himself with his small weak fingers. The others laugh, and Ezekiel and I laugh with them, and so we all laugh together.

Well, now you know us all, and you know what it is like around here.

CHAPTER II

AN INTERRUPTED CELEBRATION

My, how well I remember the day that we almost killed the dean's wife! That sounds queer; but it really was a live dean's wife that we really came within a hair's breadth of killing. And that, while we were just playing and celebrating the Seventeenth of May—the day when Norway adopted her own constitution, you know.

Now you shall hear how it happened.

Right behind our old house we have a whole big breezy hill. If any of you live down on the coast, you will know how beautiful it is and what fun one can have up on such a hill. If you have only seen it as you went by on the steamer, you would never imagine how lovely it is up on bare gray hills that look out towards the sea. Little soil, but lots of sunshine; wherever there is a tiny crevice, fine long blades of grass, buttercups, and yellow broom will immediately start up. Wild rose bushes and juniper cling to the hillside here and there, and then the heather away up on the top;—all over the whole flat top nothing but purple heather. Above is the clear blue sky; and out there the sea in a great wide circle—nothing to shut off the view; oh, it is glorious!

This has really nothing to do with the dean's wife, but I only wanted to explain what it was like up there on the hill. For it was up there that Nils Trap, Ezekiel, Peter, Karsten, Mina, Massa, and I played, many a pleasant day.

Right at our yard the hill begins to be steeper; first comes a little walled-in garden, then terraces and cliffs, big rocks and little rocks, then down a steep precipice, and then up a few steps again where you have to use hands and feet both, and grab hold of the heather and juniper if you want to go farther up.

About half-way up the hill there is a great big rock jutting out, which you can only climb on one side, and that with the greatest difficulty. This is our fort. Here we have both batteries and bastions, a room for bullets and cannon-balls, a room for powder, and a dungeon. From up there we have the most splendid view down over the town with its low gaily painted wooden houses, and the small leafy linden-trees that creep up through the streets. From our fort people down there look just like darning-needles; from the very top of the hill they look like a swarming mass of little pins.

I remember distinctly that particular Seventeenth of May; the spring had come so early that we already had fine young birch leaves and clear mild air. For several days we had been talking about a feast that we wanted to have in the dungeon, for there we should be wholly out of sight. There was to be a salute, speeches and songs. Peter and Karsten were always the gunners. With much trouble we had carried big stones up to the fort; these we threw with all our might down again over the precipice. This was our way of giving a salute; it made no little racket, you may be sure! The boys were to provide something to drink, and we the cake and glasses. We were never allowed to take any glasses up on the hill, except old goblets with the feet broken off. I thought then it was terribly stingy of Mother not to let us have proper glasses.

Ezekiel made the speech in honor of the day. I can still see his thin white fingers round the broken glass while he spouted and speechified about "our young freedom crowns this day of liberty with flowers." I had lately read the whole speech in an old children's paper, and of course had to confide this fact to Mina; the others wanted to know what we were laughing about, and at last all the listeners were laughing and whispering to each other; but Ezekiel stuck to it. After the speech four stones were thrown down. Karsten was beaming. "Oh, oh, what a crash!" he kept saying.

After that Ezekiel made a speech in honor of Sweden; at the end of the speech he suggested that we should sing:

but as none of us knew the tune, and Ezekiel himself hadn't a speck of music in him, the song wouldn't go. For it didn't help us at all for him to insist that he heard the tune plainly in his head. Then Nils Trap made a speech in honor of the ladies; I remember how I admired the few telling words: "A cheer and four shots for the ladies!" Not a bit more! I thought that sounded so awfully manlike.

Peter rushed off to the top of the fort to fire off the shots, Karsten after him, his hair standing on end. The stones went crashing over—the next moment we heard a doleful shriek from below. Peter came rushing down to the dungeon, ashy-gray under his freckles, crying:

"Oh, Mother—Mother——"

We all dashed up instantly. Down below the fort, just at the foot of the precipice, stood the dean's little crooked wife, with a purple kerchief over her head and one slender hand held up in the air. The stone, which had been fired off in honor of the ladies, lay less than two feet from her!

Even to this day I am sorry that I didn't run to her at once and go back with her down the hill. That didn't occur to any of us, I think. When we found that she hadn't been hit, but was only terribly frightened at seeing the great stone in the air right over her, we almost thought, up there in the fort, that it was rather unseemly of the dean's wife to scream out so.

She crept down the hill alone; she had just gone up to see to a white bed-spread that was hanging on a bush to dry.

Our festive mood was gone, however,—shocked out of us, as it were.

Karsten struck into the air with clenched fists, as he always does when he is excited. It wasn't so very dangerous, he protested; for if he had been the dean's wife, of course he would have seen what direction the stone was taking in the air, and if it went that way, why then he would have jumped to one side—like this—and if the stone went the other way, why then you could just jump to the other side. Besides, if the dean's wife had been, as she ought to have been, as strong as Nils Heia, for instance, then she might have stood perfectly still, fixed her eyes on the stone, held her hands to catch it, and tossed it away. Yes, wouldn't Nils Heia have done it that way? Wouldn't he be strong enough for that?

But very soon the horror of it came over me; just think, if Peter had killed his own mother! I remember clearly that I wouldn't have anything more either to eat or drink, and Nils Trap teased me, and said I had grown quite white around the nose with fright.

As we sat there looking at each other and not able to get started on anything again, suddenly we heard a voice:

"Peter."

"That's Father," said Peter, and crouched away down so that he couldn't possibly be seen from below.

"Hush—sh—keep still—hush!" We lay in a heap, frightened and silent.

"Peter," came again from below. "Come down this instant. I know you are up there."

"Hush—just keep still, not a sound."

Dead silence.

"Well, if you don't come at once——" The dean was furious; we could hear that in his voice.

"I've got to go," said Peter, standing up. "I've got to—I've got to——" He scrambled out; the rest of us just stuck our heads up to see what would happen.

There stood the dean with no hat, just in his wig, and furiously angry. It was no fun to be Peter now. He was everlastingly slow about clambering down. The dean scolded up towards our six heads, sticking out of the dungeon:

"Yes, just try such a thing again—just try it—your backs shall suffer for it—big boys and girls as you are—killing people with stones!"

"Yes, but we didn't kill anybody," called Karsten.

I was perfectly appalled at Karsten's daring to call out such a thing to the dean, who, however, paid not the least attention; Peter had at last come within his reach, so he had something else to do.

First a box on one ear: "I'll teach you,"—then a box on the other ear: "almost killing your own mother"—and he kept on hitting. But only think; although I felt so terribly sorry for Peter, so sorry that I believe I should have been glad to take the blows in his place—I was as much to blame as he—yet there was something so fearfully exciting in watching Peter and the dean down there, that I almost felt disappointed when the dean took Peter by his left ear and dragged him away. The boys had lately made a little path down the hill and to the back gate of the dean's garden. It was lucky for Peter that there was some sort of a beaten track, now that he was being led along it by the ear.

"You can depend upon it that Peter will get a thrashing," said Karsten, who also felt the excitement of the moment. "But if it were I"—he grew very earnest—"I'd throw myself on my back and stretch my legs up in the air and kick so that nobody could come near me. He shouldn't beat me, no indeed, he'd soon find that out."

It was all over with the celebration. Ezekiel proposed that we should finish up the refreshments—we divided the cake equally—and then we clambered down; but we took the path to our garden, not to the dean's. We only whispered, we didn't speak a single loud word, till we got down. We got a scolding, a thorough scolding, from the dean, but Mother cried when she heard what a calamity we had nearly brought about. And I minded Mother's tears much more than I did the dean's scolding.

Afterwards, when we asked Peter what had happened to him, he didn't answer, but just smiled feebly.

Yes, that is the way our Seventeenth of May celebration was interrupted!

CHAPTER III

MY FIRST JOURNEY ALONE

Well! I didn't travel entirely alone, either, you must know; for, you see, I had Karsten with me. But he was only nine years old that summer, so that it was about the same or even worse than traveling alone. To make a journey with small children by steamer isn't altogether comfortable, as any grown person will tell you.

It is curious how tedious everything gets at home in your own town when you have decided to make a journey. Whatever it might be that the boys and girls wanted to play—whether it was playing ball in the town square, or hide-and-go-seek in our cellar, or caravans in the desert up on the hilltop, or frightening old Miss Einarsen by knocking on her window (which is generally great fun)—it all seemed stupid and tiresome beyond description now.

For I was going to travel, going on a journey, and that is the jolliest, jolliest fun! Alas! for the poor stay-at-homes who couldn't go away but had to walk about the same old town streets, and smell street dust, and gutters, and stale sea-water in by the wharves.

But I have clean forgotten to tell you where I was going. Mother has a sister who is married to a minister. They live fifteen or twenty miles from our town and we go there every summer. But this summer, it had been decided that Karsten and I should go there alone for the first time.

The afternoon before we were to set out I went down back of our wood-shed, where all the boys and girls that I go with generally come every afternoon. It was hot enough to roast you and awfully dry and dusty; but I took my new umbrella down with me all the same. It wasn't really silk, but I had wound it and fastened it so tightly together that it looked just as slender and delicate as a real silk one. I wouldn't play ball with the rest of them. I just stood and swung my umbrella about.

"Have you got a new umbrella?" said Karen. "Is it a silk one?" asked Netta. "You've got eyes in your head," I answered. And so they all thought it was a silk one. I couldn't play ball with them, I said, because I had to go in and pack. Now that wasn't true at all, for I knew well enough that Mother had done all the packing; but it sounded so off-hand and important. They all teased me to stay down with them for a while, but no indeed, far from it. "I have too much to do. I start to-morrow morning early. Good-bye."

"Good-bye and a happy journey," shouted the company.

When I got in the house I was a little sorry that I hadn't stayed out with the others; for I hadn't a thing to do but go from one room to another and tighten the shawl-straps for the twentieth time at least. I thought the afternoon would never come to an end.

Early in the morning, before it was really light, the maid came into the room and shook me and whispered, "Now you must get up. It's half-past four o'clock. Get up! The steamer goes at half-past five, you know." Oh, how dreadfully sleepy I was, but it was great fun all the same. The sun was not shining into my room yet, but on the church tower it glowed like a fire. The weather was going to be good. Hurrah! All the doors and windows of the sleeping-rooms stood wide open. It was so sweet and fresh and quiet everywhere, fragrant with the smell of the trees and fresh garden earth outside. We went in to say good-bye to Father and Mother at their bedside.

"Remember us to everybody and be nice, good children," said Mother.

"Don't lose everything you have with you," said Father. Humph! Lose—Father seemed to forget that I was nearly grown up now.

As we went down the hill, the stones under the elm-trees were still all moist with dew. Oh! how quiet it was out-of-doors! Suddenly away down in the town a cock crew. Everything seemed very strange.

Karsten and I ran ahead and Ingeborg, the maid, came struggling after us with our big green tine.[1] Suddenly a desperate anxiety came over me. Suppose the steamboat should go off and leave us! Then how we ran! We left Ingeborg and the tine and everything else behind. When we turned round the corner into the market square, the sun streamed straight into our eyes and there by the custom-house wharf lay the steamboat, with steam up and sacks of meal being put on board. Karsten and I dashed across the square. Pshaw! we were in plenty of time. There wasn't a single passenger aboard yet. It is a little steamboat, you know, that only goes from our town over to Arendal. I got Karsten settled on a seat, kneeling and facing the water, and then established myself in a jaunty, free and easy manner by the railing as if I were accustomed to travel. Ole Bugta and Kristen Snau and all the other clodhoppers on the wharf should never imagine that this was the first time I had been aboard a steamboat.