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.