Oh yes—that time——

In reality, this story isn’t much to my credit, but you shall hear it nevertheless.

You ought to see how many queer persons there are in our town. I mean persons who are not exactly right in their minds, but who are allowed to go about because they never do any harm. I used to think it was great fun to run after them and tease them, but I never do that any more; and the reason I do not is just what I am going to tell you about.

Well, Mrs. Lennertsen is one of these queer persons. She is awfully dressy, wears a French shawl that trails on the ground and carries a blue silk parasol with a jointed handle so that it can be turned at different angles. When any one greets her, she stands stockstill and makes a grand curtsey such as we learn at dancing-school. She is so old that there are criss-cross wrinkles all over her face.

With every single ship that comes in Mrs. Lennertsen expects seven barrels of gold, neither more nor less. Under her shawl she carries a whip and is not at all slow in bringing it out to use if any one teases her; and she is awfully comical then. But I never tease her any more, I really don’t.

Well, then there is Jens Julsen, with a humpy nose such as the ancient kings of Oldenborg had. He wears a worn-out silk hat and sings songs, one after the other, incessantly. After each song he says, “Finis,” and immediately starts a new one.

But never mind about Jens Julsen now. Evan “Henny-Penny” (I don’t know his real last name) is the one this story is about. He is small and rosy-cheeked and wears a gray coat that reaches down to his shoes; and he carries a big staff that is much longer than himself. It is really a big, stout fence rail, and you can understand what a long way he can reach and hit with that. He was once a school-teacher, but now he lives at the old yellow poorhouse, although he usually spends the whole day on the wharf. There is no one that all of us children have been so horrid to as to Evan Henny-Penny.

Whenever he showed himself at the street corner we were after him, shouting, teasing, and snatching at his coat. The rough boys from the Point may have treated him shamefully, but among the children in our part of the town, I believe I was the worst.

Every single day I thought of some new way to tease him. Of course, at that time, it seemed mighty good fun; now it makes me loathe myself to think how I plagued him, for if it had not been for that queer little Evan——

It was one afternoon in October. The weather was just the kind that I like so much, a strong gale blowing from the sea, high tide washing over the wharf, and a rumbling, roaring sound like thunder in the air. The big ash-trees near the church writhed and creaked and groaned; the weather-vane turned round and round, squeaking every minute. All that blowing and stir and noise everywhere suits me exactly. I just love it.

But I could never get any of my friends to enjoy it with me.

“Ugh! No.—Are you going out in such weather?” they say when I ask them to go. “Ugh! Such frightful weather.”

So I go alone, up on the hills, or down on the wharf, or anywhere.

That day, too, I was alone. I had gone to the big ice-house at South Bay, because some one had said that a big ship was adrift out there and I wanted to see it. But, if you please, that was all bosh—there was neither ship nor anything else worth looking at in South Bay.

When I go off alone that way I think of tremendously entertaining things. I think of families with ever so many children and the jolly times they have. I know how all the people I invent look, and what they say, and what they do; and they travel over the whole wide world. I decide everything for them. I am queen over them all. To invent this way is the most entertaining thing in the world. Sometimes I tell Karen and Mina about it, but I can see plainly that they don’t understand at all what I mean.

“Do you know these people?” asked Karen once.

“No, I just invent them, you know.”

“Can there be any fun in that?” sniffed Karen, scornfully. Since then I never talk about what I think of when I am alone.

I remember well that as I walked to the icehouse at South Bay that afternoon I made up a story about two little girls who traveled alone all the way to Egypt to visit an awfully rich uncle.

Since there was no ship or anything interesting to be seen, I sat down on the edge of the wharf, thinking it would be fun to see whether the waves would dash high enough to wet my legs if I stretched them far down. One wave after another came rolling in, black but topped with white foam. Whack!—splash!—one struck against the wharf. No, it did not reach me. Now another wave,—an enormous one—but that did not reach me either.

Some one came pattering along behind me. I turned around and saw Evan Henny-Penny with his long staff.

“Is that you, Henny-Penny?” I called.

“You’ll fall into the water if you sit there,” said Evan.

“Shall I really, Henny-Penny?”

He came nearer, right to where I was sitting. I got up hastily. I am not in the least afraid of Evan, but for all that, it made me feel queer to have him come so close to me with that long staff of his.

As you can well understand, I hadn’t a clear conscience with regard to Evan, so horrid as I had always been to him with my teasing and calling him names.

When I had run a few steps away from him, I got hold of a little stick and began to tease him. I danced round and round him, poked him with the stick and sang a nonsense song that always made him frightfully angry:

“If I once get hold of you, you young villain,” said Evan Henny-Penny.

He tried to hit me with his stick, time after time, while I kept on dancing round and round him and chanting, “You’ll lay an egg. You’ll lay——”

Without knowing it, I had danced to the very edge of the wharf and—splash! over I went, down into the black water.

Never to my dying day shall I forget that moment. To fall and fall, to feel the ice-cold water covering me, nothing to catch hold of, knowing myself sinking—— The water seemed to freeze my very heart. I tried to scream, but could not; the water thundered in my ears. I clutched with both hands—everything failed me—only ice-cold water—I sank—sank——

I came up again. Oh, there was the wharf! I gave a piercing shriek, then—what was that? Something was let down from the wharf, something that moved. I grabbed it, and recognized it as Evan Henny-Penny’s staff. Keeping tight hold with both hands, I felt the staff pulled from above. How little Evan managed it, I can’t understand. People who heard about it afterward said it was a perfect miracle, but up to the wharf he drew me, till I could catch hold of the edge. Then he grasped my arms, pulled and pulled with all his might, and there I was on the wharf.

“Oh, Evan—Evan! Don’t be angry, Evan,” were the first words I said.

“I got you up,” said Evan, with a sly smile. “You screamed horribly there by the wharf.”

“Come home with me, Evan,” I said. “Please do.”

I felt that I must have him go home with me or I couldn’t thank him enough.

“Not a bit of it. You needn’t think I’ll do that,” answered Evan Henny-Penny.

So I had to run home alone, in my dripping clothes. My teeth chattered, I was so cold. I ran all the way, and right up-stairs to Gunhild, who put me to bed and sent some one to call Mother.

Oh, how I cried when I got to bed—because it was Evan Henny-Penny who had saved me; Evan, whom I had teased and been so horrid to, always, always!

“Oh, Mother, Mother! You must give Evan a lot to eat—lots of good things!”

“Yes, child, you may be sure I shall; but you must beg his pardon for behaving so outrageously to him, Inger Johanne; and you must never tease him or any other such poor creatures again.”

Since that October afternoon Evan has had dinner at our house every single day. When we have anything especially good, I am glad for his sake. I always look out that the best isn’t all eaten up at our table, but that Evan, out in the kitchen, gets a good big portion.

And now I never tease any of them any more, never,—Mrs. Lennertsen, Jens Julsen, or Evan; and if anybody else attempts it when I am around, I put an end to it pretty quickly, you may depend upon that. I run after a policeman immediately. Not after Mr. Weiby, who would only say, “Well, well. Off with you!” but after Mr. Skarnes, who takes them by the neck and strikes out with his club. Of course, all the children are terribly afraid of him, so teasing is getting out of fashion in our town, I am happy to say.