She began to shriek and point and throw up her arms.—Page 151.She began to shriek and point and throw up her arms.—Page 151.
He is a thin old man, and dresses in white mason's clothes, and has a frightfully sharp chin. He was as red in the face as a boiled lobster, shook his fists at us and shouted:
"Aha! it's a good thing I have witnesses here against you—you two rapscallions! setting waterspouts running all over people. You shall hang for it! you shall hang for it! Two little pigs are dead and the others nigh unto it. If there never has been a lawsuit before, there shall be one now for such imposition and abuse. I am going to your father this very minute to complain of you."
And Soren, the mason, started up the hill in a terrible hurry, straight to Father's office.
Karsten and I looked for an instant at each other. I had a cowardly wish to run away at once.
"What shall we do?" asked Karsten. "Shall we hide up on the top of the hill here all day?"
"No—we had better go down right away. We shall have to defend ourselves from Soren, the mason."
"Yes, perhaps he will say that we set the waterfall on his pigs on purpose."
When we got home, there stood Father on the door-steps and Soren, the mason, down in the yard.
Oh! how Soren looked! He was wringing his hands and crying and threatening. Father had a deep wrinkle between his eyes. That's always a sign that he is angry.
"What is this I hear? Have you drowned two young pigs of Soren's?"
"The waterfall went into his pig-pen instead of over our ground," whimpered Karsten.
"Explain how it happened," said Father to me; and I explained the whole of it exactly as it was. I tell you it was lucky for us that wehadcome down from the hilltop!
"Here are ten crowns to pay for your little pigs, Soren," said Father, "and I hope that will make it all right between us."
But for Karsten and me it wasn't all right by any means—for I had to break open my savings-bank and pay Father back for the pigs.And I had been saving ever since Christmas and had over seven crowns in it. Ugh! it is horrid that young pigs are such tender little creatures! And all that afternoon I was kept under arrest up in the trunk-room on account of the waterfall disaster.
Karsten got a whipping. He had to give up his savings, too, but there were only fifteen öre in his bank, for Karsten shakes the money out of the slit of his savings-bank almost as soon as he has put it in.
That was the last time in my whole life that I made a waterfall.
Right below our old house on the hillside stands the church. It is a little wooden church, white-painted and low, with irregular windows, one low and another high, over the whole church. The doors are low and even the tower is low; the spire scarcely reaches up over the big maple-trees, as we can see from our windows. But then the maple-trees are tremendously big.
Every one in town says that the bells in our church tower are remarkable. They are considered unusually musical, and I think they are, too; and nothing could be more fun than to stand up in the tower when those great bells are being rung!
It is awfully thrilling—exactly as if yourear-drums would be split. When you put your fingers in your ears, draw them quickly out, stuff them in again—it is like a roaring ocean of sound. You should just hear it!
It is great fun to slip in after old Peter, the bellows-blower, when he is going up to ring the bells; to grope your way up the steep worm-eaten stairs with cobwebs in every corner,—and the higher you go the narrower and steeper are the stairs; to hide yourself back of the timbers and in the corners so that Peter sha'n't see you; to stand there in that tremendous bell-clanging and then to rush down over the old stairs as if you were crazy, before Peter has shut the tower windows again and shuffled his way down.
Peter would be furious if he saw us, you know. However, he has seen us sometimes, for all our painstaking, though he can't hear us—he is deaf as a post—and he certainly can scold; and when he scolds he threatens us with all the worst things he knows of—telling the minister and the dean and everybody.
But his scolding doesn't make much difference. Our clambering up into the tower certainly can't do the least harm to any one; so, even after he has scolded us, the next time we see him slinking along and squeezing himself in through the church door (he never opens it wider than just enough to push himself through exactly like a little black mouse creeping through a crack), we are right after him, you may be sure. Sometimes there will be ten or twelve of us, without his knowing a thing about it.
But once I got rather the worst of it when I stole up to the church tower after Peter. It was grewsome, I can tell you, for only think, I got locked in the church! I have been up in the tower since, just the same, only I don't dare to go alone any more, though I wasn't exactly alone that time I'm telling you about, either; I had my little brother, Karl, with me. But as he was only a little bit of a fellow, he wasn't any help.
It was one Saturday afternoon. EverySaturday at five o'clock the church bells are rung to ring the Sabbath in. Karl and I were just passing the church when Peter came slinking along with his trousers turned up as usual. It was an afternoon towards autumn, not dark yet—far from it—but not so very light either. And how the wind blew that day! almost a gale. The big maple-trees creaked and groaned. All at once I had an overwhelming desire to run up into the tower and hear how the bells sounded when the wind blustered and howled so around the church.
"You go home now, Karl," said I, "run as fast as you can. Just let me see how fast you can run." Oh no! indeed, he wouldn't. He just clung fast to me and wanted to go with me. Oh well—pooh!—I could just as well take him along. It would be fun for him, too, to hear the bells.
When I thought Peter was well up the first flight of stairs I pushed open the heavy church door with its lead weight, and Karl and I squeezed into the church. He was heavy todrag up the stairs and I hauled and dragged as hard as I could, and he never whimpered once,—just thought it was great fun.
Peter had already begun to ring. The gale raged up here as if we were out on a wild sea, and sent mournful wails through all the cracks and openings. The church tower itself seemed to sway!
I had got Karl up the last flight of stairs. Back of the great cross-beam we were splendidly hidden. I peeped out once or twice. Peter stood with his eyes shut and pulled and pulled on the great rope. The big bells swung back and forth over our heads.
Oh! how the bells clanged and how the wind howled and roared! I had to force myself to stand still and not jump over to the window to look down upon the trees as they swayed and bowed in the strong blast. But I must not do it, of course, for then Peter would see me and I should only get another long scolding preachment. Besides, I had all I could do to keep fast hold of Karl. He wasdetermined to go out from behind the beam, and every time the bells rang louder than usual he screamed with delight. He was welcome to scream as loud as he liked, Peter could hear nothing of it anyway.
But all of a sudden, and very much sooner than I had expected, Peter stopped ringing. One, two, three—he slammed the tower windows shut. As quickly as possible I hurried Karl down the first two flights, but by that time Peter was almost upon us. Without thinking of anything except that Peter mustn't see us, I dragged Karl back into a dark corner, though it was dusky everywhere. At that moment Peter passed us. He shuffled along close to us and I could hear how carefully he groped his way down the stairs.
All at once it flashed over me that he would get down from the tower before we did, lock the door and go away. I clutched Karl and dragged him along over the nearly dark stairs, he stumbling, falling and crying a little. Peter was already in the weapon-room.
"Peter, Peter!" I shouted anxiously. "Don't lock it! Don't lock it! I am up here."
But do you suppose that Peter heard? Not a bit!
He opened the heavy church door and slammed it shut again. By that time I was right there, shouting and hammering at the door; but the key turned in the lock and Peter went his way round the corner.
Yes, he had gone, and there were we!
I was so afraid,—I don't believe I was ever so afraid in my whole long life! I hammered on the door with my fists, I shouted and screamed. Nobody heard me. Outside, the storm howled and roared.
No, I knew well enough that in such weather no one would think of coming to the churchyard, not even a child or a maid with a baby-carriage. And the church door opened on the churchyard, not on the street. It was impossible for any one to hear us all the way from the street in such a storm.
I turned around almost wild with fright.What could I do? Perhaps—perhaps we could get out through a window.
But if we tried that, we must go into the church itself. And just think! I got more afraid than ever when I thought of that, for all the ghost stories I had ever heard came to my mind. Suppose that Mina's great-grandfather, for instance, whose tomb was in there, should come walking down the church aisle, stiff and white!
I clutched Karl's hand so tightly that he screamed.
"Karl dear—little man—we must go into the church. You won't be afraid, will you?"
Karl looked uncertain as he gazed at me and asked:
"Are you afraid?"
Then I realized that I must be brave; and when there is a "must" you can, you know; and there is no use in whimpering, anyway.
"Are you afraid?" asked little Karl again.
"Oh, no—no, indeed."
So I opened the door of the church andpeeped in. Rows upon rows of empty seats showed dimly through the half darkness, but there wasn't the least sign of Mina's great-grandfather.
I pulled Karl along, and we almost ran up the church aisle. The whole time I felt as if something was behind me that I must be on the watch against.
O dear, O dear, how frightened I was!
No, the windows were altogether too high up in the wall even to think of reaching. For an instant I had a desperate idea of piling seats up on top of the pulpit and trying to reach a window in that way, but all the seats were fastened to the floor, and, of course, to move the pulpit was impossible for me.
All at once the thought of the bells struck me—I could ring the bells! I need only climb up to the tower, shove the shutters aside as I had seen Peter do many a time, and then just ring and ring till people came and unlocked the church.
But, O dear!—then the whole town wouldknow of it and talk of it forever. How frightfully embarrassing that would be!
No, no, I wouldn't ring the bells. I'd rather shout myself hoarse. So Karl and I screamed: "Open the door for us! Open the door, open the door!" But the storm outside roared and howled louder than we could and no one heard us. We didn't keep quiet an instant. We ran back and forth screaming, and banging and kicking on all the doors.
Suddenly I thought of the vestry. Like a flash I darted in there. Oh! what a relief—what a relief! The windows here were low—only a few feet above the ground; here it would be easy enough to get out. I rushed to a window—but would you believe it! there wasn't a sign of a hook or a hinge! These windows hadn't been opened in all the hundreds of years the church had stood. That's the way people built in old times.
Here I was right near the ground and yet couldn't get out. In my desperation I seized an old book with a clasp that lay there, andsmashed a window-pane with it, and then I stuck my face through the broken pane and shouted out into the storm, "Open the door!"
Not a person was to be seen; but merely to feel the fresh air blowing on my face gave me more courage.
"Has God a knife?" suddenly asked Karl.
Yes, I thought He had.
"Well, if He has a knife, He could just cut the door to pieces, and then we could go out."
At that moment I saw old Jens pass the window as he came shambling through the churchyard. He is a dull-witted fellow who lives at the poorhouse.
I wasn't slow in getting my face to the window again, you may be sure!
"Jens, Jens-s-s! Come and open the door. I'm locked in the church."
Never in my life shall I forget how Jens looked when he heard me call. He sank almost to his knees; his lips moved quickly but without a sound coming forth.
And smashed a window-pane with it.—Page 165.And smashed a window-pane with it.—Page 165.
At last, when he had quite got it into his head that it was my familiar face he saw at the vestry's broken window, he drew near very cautiously.
"Is she in the church?" was what came from him finally in the utmost amazement.
"Why, yes, you can see that I am," said I. "Run as fast as you can and get some one to open the door. Get the minister or the deacon or Peter, the bellows-blower."
Jens set down a tin pail he carried and seemed to be thinking deeply.
"But how came she in church?"
I had no wish to explain to him.
"Oh, never mind that! Just run and get the key, do please, Jens." Then Jens trudged away.
Oh, how long he was gone! I stared and stared at the lilac bushes swaying back and forth before the window, twisting and bending low in the storm, and I waited and waited, but no Jens appeared. It grew darker and darker and Karl cried in earnest now, and wanted to smash all the windows with the clasped book.The only thing that gave me comfort was Jens' tin pail. It lay on the ground shining through the dark. I reasoned that Jens was sure to come back to get his pail. Finally I heard footsteps and voices, a key was put in the lock, and there at the open door stood the deacon, Jens, and the deacon's eight children.
"Who is this disturbing the peace of the church?" asked the deacon with the corners of his mouth drawn down.
"I haven't disturbed anything," said I. "I only want to get out."
"There must be an explanation of this," said the deacon. "I have no orders to open the church at this time of the day."
I began to be afraid that the door would be shut again!
"Oh, but you will let me out!" said I pleadingly.
"Ah, in consideration of the circumstances," said the deacon. I did not wait to hear more, but squeezed myself and Karl out and through the deacon's flock of children.
Since that day when I meet old Jens, he bows to me in a very knowing way; and if I want to tease him I say, "Weren't you the 'fraid-cat that time I called to you from the church?"
I myself was more afraid than he was, but old Jens couldn't know that.
And what do you think of my having to pay for the pane of glass I broke in the vestry? Well—that was exactly what I had to do, if you please.
Now you shall hear about my summer vacation and all sorts of things.
We stayed at a farm in the country in a high valley. The farm was called Goodfields, and they certainly were good fields, for such fat horses, and such round cows, and such rich milk I never saw before in all my life. For the horses could hardly get between the shafts of the wagons—that is really true—and the cows were like trolls' cows; the trolls' cows (in the fairy stories) are so well taken care of that they shine so you can almost see your face in them, you know. The Goodfields cows could thank old Kari, the milkmaid, for their plumpness.
Kari is seventy and looks very, very old.
All through the week she never sat down, but went puttering about the whole day long; on Sunday evenings she sat out on the hill and smoked her clay pipe. I used to lie beside her on the grass.
"The horse and the manHave to bear all they can.But the cow and the wifeFare the hardest in life,"
"The horse and the manHave to bear all they can.But the cow and the wifeFare the hardest in life,"
said old Kari. And therefore she always raked away the best hay from the horses and stuffed the cows with it.
It was out on the hill that Kari told about the Goodfields brownie in the old days. Old Kari's mother had often driven in a sledge over Goodfields hill while the brownie stood behind on the runner chuckling and laughing. But the queer thing was that when they stopped at the top of the hill or down in the valley, they didn't see him, but no sooner had they started off than there was the brownie on the runner again.
It is really horrid that there are no brownies in the world any more!
Goodfields lay high up among the mountains. There were great green hills and meadows stretching down towards the fjord, and dark spruce forests above on the mountain, and far below, the still, shining fjord. And behind each other as far as we could see there were just mountains, exquisite blue mountains, rising into the bright sunny air.
The buildings were very big; there was nothing small at Goodfields, two big main houses with big drawing-rooms and big canopied beds and big down puffs, and big goats' milk cheeses like mountains, and big milk-pans.
That's the way it was at Goodfields, beauty and plenty everywhere. And it all belonged to Mother Goodfields. And she was the nicest person in the world, for she was so kind. She wasn't the least bit cross when we tagged after her in the dairy and the grain-house, and we might eat all the green gooseberries in the garden, if we wanted to. And everybody who waspoor and sick went to Mother Goodfields, as all the people in the neighborhood called her. She was big and strong and earnest and helped them all. She was a widow and had no children, and it seemed to her so lonely on the big farm that she took summer boarders.
On the fjord the little steamboat went up one day and down the next, with foreigners who sat stretching their legs out on the deck and stared sleepily at the mountains.
I am not fond of mountains, to tell the truth. Ugh! when you stay among them it seems so cramped and horrid. You feel just like a little ant at last. No, give me the sea, with its seaweed tossing on the waves, and its rocking boats and vessels, and the reefs and the fresh wind.
There were many times at Goodfields when it was so downright hot in the valley that I felt like crying when I thought of the sea. My brother Karsten felt exactly the same.
There were eight mothers and eleven children and five teachers at Goodfields that summer.I can't describe them, it would take too long; besides all grown up women are alike, it seems to me. There were only two big children of my age at Goodfields, Petter Kloed and Andrine Voss. Petter Kloed was very elegant; only think, he wore yellow gloves way off there in the country. And what he liked best in the world was ice-cream and champagne. Never in my life had I tasted either ice-cream or champagne, but I didn't say so, for that would be awkward. And then Petter Kloed was not really nice to his mother, I think, and that was a great shame, for Mrs. Kloed doted on him, and would give him anything if he only looked at it.
Andrine Voss was hardly pretty at all, but she had awfully long eyelashes and when she half shut her eyes she looked very mysterious. But she only looked so, she wasn't the least bit mysterious, for she was my best friend and did everything I wanted her to the whole summer.
We have decided that she shall marry acounty judge, and I a doctor, but we will live in the same house and have just the same number of children. And we are going to be friends all our lives.
The other children who were at Goodfields that summer were just little ones, some roly-polys and some thin, pale, little things who were dressed in laces and took malt extract, and had legs no bigger than drumsticks.
One Sunday we went to church. Four fat horses and four wagons started from Goodfields with the churchgoers.
It was so peaceful and so beautiful; down on the fjord one boat after another set out from the opposite side bringing people to church; the boats left a broad streak behind them in the calm, smooth water.
We drove past little groups of peasants—women and girls with white linen head-dresses, and men in shirt-sleeves with their jackets over their arms, for the sun was roasting hot on the open roads. "Good cheer," they all greeted us with, and when we had passed I heard themwhisper to each other: "They are the summer folk from Goodfields."
More and more people gathered along the quiet roads; and there on a height stood the church,—a white wooden church with a low tower, and a church-bell which rang with a cracked sound out over the leafy forest and the fields and the still water.
The horses were tied in a long row on the other side of the road, and the boys and men stood leaning against the stone wall around the churchyard, but the women were farther in among the graves. They all exchanged greetings, shaking hands loosely, standing well away from each other. "Thanks for our last meeting," they said, looking quickly away. It was so queer. People don't do like that in town.
They sang without an organ, and it sounded so innocent, somehow, and the church door stood wide open to the sunshine. But what do you think happened? In came a goat right in the midst of the hymn.
The church clerk stood in the choir door and led the singing; one of his arms was of no use; I had heard of that. All at once there in the open church door stood a goat. I wonder what's going to happen now, thought I.
The goat turned his head first one way, then the other,—then as true as you live he came pattering in. Patter, patter, sounded short and sharp over the church floor. Every one turned to look, and the singing died away, little by little, but no one got up to put the goat out.
Farther and farther up towards the choir pattered the goat. Suddenly the clerk saw him. For a moment he looked terribly bewildered, then very thoughtfully he laid his psalm-book aside and walked down the aisle.
Then you should have seen the clerk engineer the goat out with his one arm. He had hold of one horn, and the goat resisted, and the clerk shoved, and so, little by little, they worked themselves down the church. Oh, I shall never forget it!
The singing stopped altogether, except thatone and another old woman off in the corners held the tune with shaky voices. I was awfully interested in seeing how the goat and the clerk got on. If it had been I, I should have hurried that goat out faster than the clerk did, I'll wager.
Down by the door the goat got all ready to jump, wanting to start up the aisle again. If the tussle had lasted a moment longer I should have had to laugh—but then the clerk made a mighty effort, turned the goat entirely around, and there it was—out!
The clerk in the meantime had risen to the occasion, for at the very instant that the goat went head over heels down the steps, he took up the tune just where he had left off, and sang all the way up the aisle. Awfully well done of him, I think.
There! Now you understand what it was like at Goodfields, and now you shall hear about all the different things that happened in our summer vacation.
At Goodfields, the houses for the farm laborers are up in the forest. Towards Goodfields itself, the forest is thick and dark, but up where it has been cleared, willows and alders grow in clumps, and there are tiny little fields and still smaller potato patches, belonging to each sun-scorched hut with its turf roof and windows of greenish glass. From the clearing you can look upward to the mountains, or downward, over the thick pines and through the leafy trees, to the smooth, shining fjord.
All the huts for the farm-hands were full to running over with children. In Henrik-hut there were nine, in Steen-hut eight, and in North-hut eleven; and they were all tow-headed and bare-footed and all had mouths stained with blueberries.
Henrik-hut was the place we summer-boarder-children liked best because there was a dear old grandmother there with such soft, kind eyes. She could not go out any more, but sat always in an armchair beside the window; on the window-sill lay her much-worn brown prayer-book.
Oleana was Grandmother Henrik-hut's daughter. She was big, very much freckled, always good-natured, and talked a steady stream, often about her husband. She didn't seem highly delighted with him.
"Poor Kaspar!" said Oleana. "He hasn't brains enough for anything. No, I can truly say he hasn't much sense under his hat. Things would be pretty bad at Henrik-hut if there were no Oleana here." And Kaspar agreed with her perfectly.
"I haven't much sense, or learning either," said Kaspar. "But that's the way it goes in the world,—one clever one and one stupid one come together; and so Oleana manages everything, you see."
Even with Oleana to manage, however, things had often been bad enough at Henrik-hut. They had almost starved at times, Grandmother, Kaspar, Oleana and all the nine children.
"It isn't worth speaking of now," said Oleana, "the hard scratching we have had many a time. But when the summer boarders,—fine city folk,—came to Goodfields, luck came to Henrik-hut."
Oleana did the washing for these summer guests and earned money that way, you see.
"It's just as if all this money were given to me!" said Oleana. "For our Lord fills the brooks with water and the work I put on the clothes is nothing to count."
There were beds everywhere in the one room of the hut, and what with shelves and clothes, wooden bowls and buckets and even shiny scrap-pictures on the walls, there wasn't a vacant spot anywhere. The floor was shiningly clean, however, and strewn with juniper boughs, and the sun shone cheerily through thegreenish window-panes, on Grandmother and the nine tow-headed children, and all.
Oleana had been married twenty-one years and in all that time had never owned a clock. Through the long darkness of the winter afternoons and evenings, when the snow lay thick and heavy on the pine-trees round about, and the roads were blocked in every direction with high drifts, there they would be in the hut;—Oleana and Grandmother and the nine tow-heads and the husband without much sense under his hat,—and not even the clever Oleana would have the remotest idea what o'clock it was. In summer she looked at the sun to tell the time, and on clear winter nights at the stars; though to see these, she had to get up in the cold and breathe on the thickly frosted window-pane to make a space to peep through.
One day while I was at Henrik-hut talking with Oleana, it occurred to me that we summer-boarder-children might put our money together and buy a clock for Oleana. The grown-up people wanted to help, and so we gota lot of money; and a big clock with a white dial and red roses was bought in the city.
Then it was such fun surprising Oleana with it! We had an awfully jolly time. A message was sent to her asking her to come to Goodfields; and down she came with her hair wet and smooth, and a clean stiff working-dress on, but having no notion what we wanted of her.
The clock had been hung up in the hall at Goodfields and its shining brass pendulum was swinging with a slow and sure tick-tock. All the ladies stood around and I was to present the clock.
"Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock;—and that's it."
Oleana looked as if the sky had fallen.
"Oh no, no, no!" she cried. "It isn't possible—of course not! Why should I have that clock?"
"Because you have so many children," said I.
Just then the clock struck six clear strokes, and Oleana began to cry.
"I never knew there were such kind people in the world," said Oleana, as she stood with folded hands, looking up at the clock through her tears. "Never, never!"
She didn't know how she got home, she told us later, only she had felt as if she were walking on air, she was so happy.
"And I didn't know enough to thank any one either. I was as if I had clean gone out of my wits!"
The first few nights that the clock hung on the wall at Henrik-hut, Oleana did not have much sleep, for every time the clock struck, she awoke and called down blessings on all the guests at Goodfields.
"Everything goes by the clock with us now," said Oleana. "It's nothing at all to do the work at Henrik-hut when you have a clock."
"Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock."—Page 183."Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock."—Page 183.
When the dark winter comes, when it snows and blows and the roads are blocked, how pleasant it will be to think that Oleana Henrik-hut, away up in the forest above Goodfields, has a clock ticking and ticking, and striking the hours; and that she does not need now to get up in the cold, dark nights, breathe upon the frosted panes and peep up at the stars to find out the time!
Mother Goodfields had made us a regular promise,—and shaken hands on it,—that we should go to the saeter some time during the summer. Goodfields saeter lay about fourteen miles west in the mountains. Every day I reminded Mother Goodfields of her promise so that she should not forget it, you see. For it often seems to me that grown-up people forget very easily.
We had decided beforehand that it was to be Petter Kloed, Karsten, Andrine, and I who should go.
None of the grown-ups would join us. Mrs. Proet said she should have to be well paid to go, and really, such fine, fashionable ladies as she aren't fit for a saeter anyway. Miss Mangelsen was afraid there would be fleas, and Miss Melby was afraid that she being so stout,the boat we had to cross the mountain lake in would not be strong enough to bear her. Miss Jordan had been at a hundred saeters, she said, and the only difference among them was that one was a little dirtier than another; and that degree of difference she wouldn't bother herself to see, she said. Mrs. Kloed is so nervous she never dares do anything. So at last there were none to go but Petter, Karsten, Andrine, and myself, as I have said.
Karsten had taken it into his head that at saeters there were always bears, and that cream at saeters was always exactly an inch thick; and bears and inch-thick cream were what he wanted to see. Petter Kloed wished to get hold of certain mountain flowers that he could classify. Such botany I will have nothing to do with. I smell the flowers and think they are charming, but I don't care a button which class they belong to, not I! As for going to the saeter, Andrine and I wanted to go just for the fun of going.
Well, one day in August, Olsen, the farm-boy,and Trond Oppistuen were going to the saeter to cut hay. If we wished, we were welcome to go along with them.
If we wished! Hurrah!
The next morning off we went. The lunch, and Andrine, and I, and Karsten, and Petter Kloed were in a wagon, and Trond and Olsen walked alongside with their scythes and rakes on their shoulders.
Far, far up the mountain we were to go—away up where the trees looked no taller than half a pin's length, and the thin light air was white and shining; up there and then far along to the west.
Olsen was red-haired and freckled, small and wiry. He kept step with the horse the whole way, but Trond lagged behind us down the slope.
We all sang, each our own tune, as we climbed. The air was clear, oh! so clear! The farms in the valley grew smaller and smaller, and the birch trees we passed were little and stunted.
Whenever Petter Kloed jumped out of the wagon after a flower or anything, we whipped the horse so as to get as far ahead of him as possible; Petter is as lazy as a log and hates to walk a step, so it was good enough for him.
Any boy with more grown-up, mannish airs than Petter Kloed puts on could not be found the world over. He wears long trousers and has been in the theatre a thousand times, he says; he smokes cigarettes too; and, always, about everything, no matter what it is, he says, pooh! he has seen that before; so it seems as if there were nothing left that could amuse him. Andrine admires him sometimes, I know that very well, but such silly puppies can go or stay for all I care. However, it was jolly to have him with us on the saeter trip,—just for the fun of teasing him, you know.
Karsten and Petter disputed the whole time as to how high we were in the air and how high up it was possible to breathe. At last they got all the way to the moon and Jupiter.
"I'll bet you anything you choose that Jupiter has air that people could breathe," said Karsten.
"That's just the kind of thing such a cabbage-head as you would bet on," said Petter Kloed.
At that—only think! Karsten pitched into Petter and then they began to fight in the back of the wagon.
"Are you Tartars both of you?" said I, and took a tight grip in the back of Karsten's jacket. "Don't you jump out of your skin now! If you fly at people this way as you are always doing, you shall trot back to Goodfields alone!"
"He—he is just as much of a cabbage-head as I am," mumbled Karsten, but he didn't dare to say another word, for after all, he has to respect me, you see.
Then I suggested that we should eat some of our luncheon. It's so pleasant to eat out-of-doors!
We were high, high up on the mountain,where we could see nothing but forests and mountains, a whole sea of dark, thick pine forests, and just mountains and mountains and mountains. There we drank toasts to Norway, to the summer, and to each other, and sang: "Ja, vi elsker dette landet," our national song, you know, and had an awfully jolly time.
But up there it was so still, so still! Nothing but gray-brown moor and dwarf birches, and willows and ice-cold mountain brooks. Far over across the moor we could see the road like a narrow gray ribbon in the monotonous brown. Far west were the snow-capped peaks, sharp, jagged and blue, and with great snow-drifts. It was very beautiful, unspeakably strange and still. We all grew silent.
"Ugh! I wouldn't be alone here for a good deal," said Andrine.
"I would just as soon be here in pitch darkness—if I only had my knife with me," said Karsten.
At that instant a ptarmigan flew up right at the side of the road, and Karsten came nearfalling backwards out of the cart and measuring his length on the ground.
You may be sure we all made fun of him then.
"He would like to be alone on the mountain, he would! And yet he tumbles over in fright at a ptarmigan!"
"If you can stand like a lamp-post in a cart that wobbles the way this rickety old cart does, I'll cover you with gold," said Karsten, offended.
That's the way we kept on. We quarreled and had a jolly time.
All at once a flock of goats came scrambling down the road as scared as if their lives were in danger. And we all wished that we might see a bear. Can you think of anything more exciting than to meet a bear on the road?
Petter Kloed would just go very quietly to him and scratch his back. He had done that a hundred times in the menagerie, he said. For if you just approached a bear in the right way it was a very good-natured beast, said PetterKloed, as he lit a cigarette back there in the cart.
Karsten would rather wrestle with the bear and strangle him; for if any one wanted to see a muscle that was a stunner, they could just look here; and Karsten turned up his jacket sleeves while we all examined his muscle.
The road was unspeakably long, however. The horse jogged on and on but we didn't seem to get a bit farther. After we had eaten all the luncheon, I thought that never in the world would this road come to an end. When we asked Olsen how much farther we had to go, he would only say, "Far away there—and far away there." All I could think of was the fairy tale about the prince who had to go beyond the mountain into the blue. Andrine got drowsy and wanted to sleep, and I had to take Karsten in front with us; for, strangely enough, the longer we rode the less room there was for Karsten's and Petter's legs in the back of the wagon. At last they did nothing butkick each other, so Karsten had to come in front and Petter could sit in lonely grandeur on the wooden lunch-box.
Finally we came in sight of the water that we had to cross. It was a large lake, black and still.
"Hurrah! You must wake up now, Andrine!"
There lay the boat we were to row over in, and there was the enclosure where the horse was to be left. Oh, how good it was to stretch one's legs after sitting so long!
But now Karsten began to put on airs. He wanted to show how clever he was in a boat, so he took command, gave orders, and thrashed the air with his arms,—you never saw such behavior.
"He's a great fellow in a boat," said Trond.
The stones at the edge of the lake were wet and slimy. Petter Kloed clambered into the boat with great care.
"Look out for yourself, you landlubber!" said Karsten. Then he pressed an oar hardagainst a stone to shove the boat out from shore. Everything was to go at full speed, you see, but the oar slipped and Karsten went head over heels into the water. It was only by a hair's breadth that we escaped having that flat, rickety boat turn upside down with us all. I can tell you I was thoroughly frightened then. I have always heard that there is no bottom to these mountain lakes, but that the water goes straight through the earth! Although we were scarcely more than a fathom's length from shore, the water was deep black, and you couldn't see any bottom.
"Oh! Karsten! Karsten!"
His head bobbed up between the water-lilies and broad green leaves, and Olsen hauled him up into the boat.
"Ah-chew! Pshaw! Ah-chew! that horrid oar!" sneezed and scolded Karsten, as soon as he got his breath. "Horrid old boat! Horrid old water! Ah-chew!"
"Now we must row fast," said Trond—"so that this body doesn't get sick, he is so wet."And Trond and Olsen began rowing briskly over the water. But Karsten lay in the bottom of the boat with Andrine's and my raincoats over him, looking awfully fierce and gloomy. I can't tell you how tempted we were to tease him, but we were so high-minded and considerate that we didn't do it. Of course, I might have teased him myself, but if Petter Kloed had tried it, he would have had me to reckon with. Karsten was furious if we even spoke to him.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"Hold your tongue," said Karsten.
Trond and Olsen rowed so that the sweat ran down their faces, and soon there we were, across. We saw Goodfields saeter above the hill and began running, all four of us. Nobody was to be seen outside the hut, and we nearly frightened the life out of Augusta, the milkmaid, when we stormed in upon her. But when she had gathered herself together, she laughed and her white teeth fairly glistened.
"Now this is grand! I never could havethought of anything like this!" said Augusta, the milkmaid.
Then Karsten had to be undressed and put into Augusta's bed, and all his clothes were hung by the hearth and Augusta built up such a hot fire to dry them that they made everything steamy. Suddenly she remembered that the son from Broker farm was staying at a near-by saeter just now. Perhaps he had some clothes that Karsten might borrow. Olsen was sent over there and came home with some things. It was mighty good that Karsten could get up, for he wasn't very agreeable while he lay in bed, you may be sure.
What a sight he was when he was dressed! I shall never forget it. With a jacket that reached below his knees and Augusta's kerchief on his head—oh, he did look so funny! But not the least shadow of a smile did we dare allow ourselves, for he would at once have flown under the sheepskin bedclothes again, crosser than ever. That's the way Karsten is, you see.
Oh, pshaw! A fine rain had begun, themountains were perfectly black, and patches of fog lay all around.
"Perhaps you'd like to fish," said Augusta; "they usually bite in such weather."
Trond and Olsen had begun to cut the grass around the hut, and Petter Kloed and Karsten started off with fishing-rods over their shoulders. You should have seen Karsten with the fishing-rod and with the kerchief on his head.
Andrine and I wanted to help Augusta get dinner, for it was exactly like playing in a doll-house, only much more fun! Augusta made some cream-porridge and her face shone like a polished sun—with the heat and the anxiety that the porridge should be good. We had salt in a paper cornucopia, milk in wooden bowls, and shining yellow wooden spoons to eat with.
What fun! Even if the rain were trickling down the window, we were enjoying ourselves tremendously.
Well, now you shall hear what a hullabaloo there was at the saeter that afternoon.
It had begun to grow dark, for it was thelast of August. Trond and Olsen had gone to another saeter to see some friends of theirs. Immediately after dinner Petter and Karsten had gone out to fish again, because before dinner they had caught only a baby trout about as long as your finger. However, Karsten broiled that, insides and all.
Just as Augusta, Andrine and I were milking out in the barn, we heard a scream that I shall never forget. I thought it was Karsten's voice, and I was so frightened I didn't know what to do with myself. The whole moor was so dark that nothing was to be seen. There came another scream, and without a word Augusta ran out on the moor. But an instant after Karsten came rushing around the corner of the barn, with face pale as death and his hair standing straight up.
"A bear! A bear! He is after me! Oh, help! Oh, oh!"
Into the barn he dashed, Andrine and I at his heels, hastily shutting the door. It was pitch-dark in the barn.
"Was he after you? Where is Petter?"
My heart was pounding. Bears usually knocked a barn-door in with one whack, and here we stood in pitch-black darkness.
Karsten was so out of breath he could scarcely speak.
"Oh! the way he ran! I never would have believed a bear could run so!" panted Karsten.
"Oh!—oh!—oh!" shrieked some one outside the barn. "Help! oh, help!"
It was Petter's voice, and we heard also an animal breathing quickly and then something like a growl.
As with one impulse Andrine, Karsten, and I sprang into a stall behind a cow. The bear would surely take the cow first before it took us. How unspeakably frightened I was! Karsten wanted to get behind Andrine and me too, and puffed and pushed himself in, and we got to fighting there in the stall just from sheer fright.
There came a horrible thump against the barn-door, it burst open and Petter Kloed tumbledinto the barn on all fours; and leaping on his back was a big black beast.
How Petter howled I could never give you any idea, for such a howl must be heard if you are to know what it was like. Karsten and I shrieked with him; and all the cows got up, rattled their chains, and bellowed.
"Ha ha! Ha ha!" laughed Augusta from the barn-door. "Did any one ever see such doings! Oh, I really must laugh! I was pretty sure it was the dog, old Burmann. There hasn't been a bear on this mountain the whole year. Shame on you, Burmann, to frighten folk this way!"
"How you did howl, Petter!" said Karsten, coming out of the stall.
"Perhaps you didn't scream," said Petter Kloed.
They quarreled and disputed till the sparks flew, as to which had been the most scared. But my knees trembled so I had to sit down on a milking-stool, and Andrine cried and sobbed, she had been so frightened.
Karsten got braver and braver.
"I was no more scared out of my wits than I ever am," said he. "I screamed only because—because—well, just so that Petter could hear where I was!"
"Such a horrid dog!" said Petter, reaching after Burmann.
"You could just have scratched his back as you do to bears in menageries," said I. Augusta laughed so that her laughter echoed through the whole place, and I teased them as much as I could. When I really make a point of it, I'm awful at teasing—it is such fun.
"Ugh! Girls are nothing but rubbish," said Karsten.
"To think that you didn't strangle the bear with such muscles as you have," I said.
"If you don't keep still!" said Karsten threateningly.
It was such fun! I laughed till my cheeks ached.
My! but that was an awfully jolly and delightful visit to the saeter. But at night Andrineand I slept in a bed that was as hard as a stone, and Andrine lay the whole night right across the bed and squeezed me almost to death.
In the morning the air and everything was oh, so fresh! Our hair blew all over our faces; we washed in the brook and the water was so cold that our finger-nails ached.
After breakfast we started home again. We stood up in the wagon and shouted hurrah as long as we could see Augusta in the saeter hut door, and after that we sang all the way down the mountain.
But that story of the bear at the saeter Petter and Karsten had to hear all summer long, for they were just as puffed up as ever.
Nothing impresses such conceited boys, you know.
Oh, that awful, awful time! Even now I can wake in the middle of the night, start up in bed and stare around frightened and trembling, for I dream that I am in the dark forest alone, as I was that time at Goodfields. Well, I wasn't absolutely alone, but I was the oldest, you see, and so I had all the responsibility for both of us, and that is almost worse than to be alone.
It was little brother Karl who was with me. We children were going to have a blueberry party—that was the beginning of the whole thing. We wanted to treat all the grown-up boarders, and Mother Goodfields, and the maids too. They should all have blueberries with powdered sugar, nothing else; anyway that was enough. But we should need a lot of blueberries, oh, a frightful lot of them!
So we went off, each choosing his own clumpof bushes, and picked and picked; and then Karlie-boy and I got lost. Now, you shall hear.
It was in the morning, a very hot morning. The air in the valley had been perfectly still all night. We had slept beside open windows with only a sheet over us.
Immediately after breakfast I flew to the forest, for I knew a place where I wanted to pick berries all by myself. Just as I was climbing over the fence of the home hill-pasture, Karl saw me and called out, "I want to go with you—it's mean of you—oh! oh! to run away from me—I want to go too."
He made such a hullabaloo with his screaming that I had to stop and wait for him. But one ought never in the world to humor screeching children, for no good comes of it. How much better it would have been for Karl if he had not been with me that long frightful day in the forest, and that queer evening in crazy Helen's hut,—for that is where we finally found ourselves.
Yes, when I have children, I shall be awfully strict and decided with them.
It was cool there in the forest. The sunshine came in only in golden stripes and spots. Never in my life have I seen so many blueberries and such high blueberry bushes as we found that day. I picked and picked. Meanwhile Karl ate and ate, till he was nothing but one big blueberry stain,—he smeared himself so with the juice.
"Did Noah have berries with him in the ark?" asked Karl.
"No, indeed."
"Then all the blueberries must have been drowned in the flood."
"Ugh, what a silly you are!"
"Well, anyway, Noah had cannon with him in the ark."
Oh, I get so sick of cannons with Karl! Whatever he talks about, he always mixes up something about cannons in it.
It was unspeakably fresh and still in the forest. I ran from one blueberry patch to another,but you may chop my head off if I understand in the least how it happened that we got lost; for I usually keep my eyes open and have my wits about me too.
All at once Karl sat himself down in a blueberry patch.
"Ugh—blueberries are disgusting," said he.
"That's because you have stuffed yourself with them," I replied.
"I want some bread and butter," said Karl. "And I'm tired—so tired."
"Oh, keep still."
A minute after, it was exactly the same.
"I'm so tired, so tired."
O dear! I should certainly have to take him home. We were in a little open space. Pine-trees stood close together around it, whispering softly. To save my life, I could not remember which direction we had come from; there were little mounds and moss and blueberry patches and pine-trees everywhere.
Whoever knew such a pickle as this? How in the world had we come here? I couldn'ttell—no matter which way I looked. I sprang here and I ran there to find something I recognized, but I got more and more bewildered and Karl grew crosser and crosser. He kicked at his basket of blueberries.
"Horrid old berries! I want to go home—I'm just mad at everything here. I'm mad as can be."
If you have never been in a great forest, you cannot possibly imagine anything so bewildering. Trees and trees and trees in every direction and nothing else; no clear space, no opening anywhere. But even yet I wasn't a bit afraid. The sunshine was bright, the forest air fragrant and I had three quarts of blueberries in my basket—three quarts at the very least. But Karl was heavy to drag along and my berry basket weighed down my other arm, and there was no end to the trees.