into pots and pans. Her mistress was going backwards and forwards
continually, between store-room and pantry, after meal, or sugar, or
butter, or sirup for the _lefser_. The store-room door was ajar for her
all day long.
So at last Toad grew downright wild. She was determined to put an end to
all this racket. So she took it upon her to well smear the threshold of
the store-room with green soap.
Next morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with butter
and a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the opening
between the stairs and the store-house door.
There she lay till Toad dragged her up.
She carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that it
was heard all over the depôt. Madame had been regularly worrying herself
to death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul had
fallen and broken her leg.
But the one who cried the most, and didn't know what to do with himself
when he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the general
dealer.
None knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.
And so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensed
the stores and made provision for the household.
She drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house--they
were only eating her master out of house and home, she said.
The _lefser_ were laid together without any sirup between them, and she
gave out fat instead of butter. She distributed it herself, and packed
it up in their _Nistebommers_[4].
Never had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposed
of so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.
And he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into the
store-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how the
cured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters in
rows and rows.
"So long as things went on as they were going now," said he, "she should
have the control of the household like mother herself," for his wife was
now bedridden in her room upstairs.
And at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely
that her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons
and gnaw bones.
But such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such _lefser_ filled
with both sirup and butter, and such _mölje_[5] and splendid fare for
the guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealer
had never seen before.
Then the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into the
shop they both went together.
She might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefs
and other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if she
were mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silk
as much as she liked. There was nothing that she might not have.
But when the bailiff and the sexton sat at cards, and Toad came in to
lay the table-cloth, they were like to have rolled off their chairs.
Such a sight they had never seen before. Toad had rigged herself up with
all manner of parti-coloured 'kerchiefs, and trimmed her hairy poll with
blue and yellow and green ribbons till it looked like a cart-horse's
tail. But they said nothing, for the sake of the general dealer, who
thought she looked so smart, and was calling her in continually.
And they were forced to confess that the wench spared neither meat nor
ale nor brandy. And on the third evening, when they got so drunk that
they lay there like logs, she carried them off to bed as if they were
sucking babes.
And so it went on, with feasting and entertaining, right up to the
twentieth day after Christmas Day, and beyond it.
And that wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever
they didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right
in the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to
attract notice, and say, "It's me!"
And when the guests left the house they must needs admit that the
general dealer was right when he said that such serving-maids were not
to be picked up every day.
But those folks who went a-fishing for the general dealer, and had their
provisions put up for them beforehand, were not slow to mark that Toad
had the control of the shop and stores likewise.
So it happened as might only have been expected. Their provisions ran
short, and they had to return home just as the cod was biting best,
while all the other fishermen sailed further out and made first-rate
hauls.
The general dealer was like to have had apoplexy on the day that he saw
his boats lying empty by the bridge in the height of the fishing season.
His men came up in a body to the shop, headed by their eldest foreman,
and laid a complaint before him.
The food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said,
couldn't be called human food at all. The _lefser_ were so hard, they
said, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat on
them, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shoulders
of mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one scraped
against the bare bone.
Up into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.
But as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that it
was as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavy
expenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, without
having to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and fresh
butter and _lefser_ and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no need
to starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses,
said she.
And then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own _lefser_, which
she had filled with butter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. And
he tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners of
his mouth. Such good greasy _lefser_ he had never tasted before.
Then the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.
He was as red as a turkey-cock; and out of the shop-door they went head
first--some three yards and some four, according as he got a good grip
of them; and old Thore, who had steered the big _femböring_, both for
him and his father, was discharged.
But Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on the
threshing-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer was
shrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood there
and peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, who
hadn't been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out of
her bedroom window.
She took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she saw
their old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his cap
in his hand as if he were deranged.
But she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, for
there stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platter
of _mölje_ in her hand, and shook her fist after him.
Then Kjel was like to have wept too.... That stout Toad should not
grease herself shiny with _mölje_ fat much longer in _their_ house, or
he'd know the reason why, thought Kjel.
And from thenceforth Kjel kept a strict watch upon her. There were lots
of things going on that he couldn't make out at all.
Towards spring-time, when they put the mast into the large new yacht
which was to take the first trading voyage to Bergen, the general dealer
was so glad that he was running up and down from the bridge to the house
the whole day. He had never imagined that the yacht would have turned
out so fine and stately.
And when they had the tackle and the shrouds all ready, and were
hoisting away at the yards, he spun round on his heel and snapped his
fingers--"That lass Toad should go with him to Bergen," said he.... "She
had never seen the town, poor thing! while as for mother, she had been
there three times already."
But it seemed to Kjel that he saw more in this than other people saw.
As for Toad, when she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularly
turned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her in
the whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn't ransack to find
the finery and frippery that glittered most.
And in the evening, when the others had lain them down to rest, she
strolled over to the storehouse with a light.
But Kjel, who was a very light sleeper, was up and after her in an
instant, and peeped at her through the crack in the door.
There he saw her cutting up the victuals and putting one tit-bit aside
after the other, _lefser_ and sweet-cakes and bacon and collared-beef,
into the large chest which she had hidden behind the herring barrels.
And on this, the last evening before their departure for Bergen, she had
filled her provision-chest so full that she had to sit upon it, with all
her huge heavy weight, to press it down.
But the lock wouldn't catch; she had filled the chest too full, so she
had to get up and stamp backwards on the lid till it regularly
thundered; and sure enough she forced it down at last.
But the heel she stamped down upon it with was much more like the hoof
of a horse than the foot of a human being, thought Kjel.
Then she carried the chest to the waggon that it might be smuggled on
board without any one seeing it. After that she went into the stable and
unloosed the horse. But then there was a pretty to do in the stable!
The horse knew that there was witchcraft afoot, and would not allow
itself to be inspanned. Toad dragged and dragged, and the horse shied
and kicked. At last the wench used her back-legs, just as a mare does.
Such sport as that no human eye should have ever seen.
And straight off to the general dealer rushed Kjel, and got him to come
out with him.
There in the moonshine that wench, Toad, and the dun horse were flinging
out at each other as if for a wager, so that their hoofs dashed against
the framework of the stable-door. Their long legs flew in turn over the
stable walls, and the sparks scattered about in showers.
Then the general dealer grew all of a shiver and staggered about. Blood
flew from his nose, and Kjel had to help him into the kitchen and duck
his head in the sink. That night the general dealer didn't go to bed at
all; but he walked up and down and stamped till the floor regularly
thundered. And it was scarcely light next morning when he sent off Kjel
with a dollar in his fist to old Thore the foreman. And he sent in the
same way to all the boat people down by the shore.
Thore was told to put on his holiday clothes and get out the
_femböring_, and row Madame herself to the yacht with the last lading.
She should go with him to Bergen. There she should get both a silk dress
and a shawl, and a gold watch and chain into the bargain, and engage a
Bergen serving-wench.
It was still early in the day when the yacht lay in the bay with her
flag flying, all ready to start.
When they had hoisted the sail, that wench Toad, heavy and stout, came,
puffing and blowing, across the bridge, in full parade, with rings on
all her sprawling fingers, and her body covered with all the yellow and
green and red ribbons she could possibly find room for on her ample
person.
There she stood waiting for them to come back in the stately _femböring_
and take her on board.
And when they began to raise the anchor, and the general dealer appeared
on deck with his large meerschaum pipe and his telescope, she smirked
and minced and wriggled and twisted, and cried aloud, "It's me!"
She thought he wanted to peep at her splendour through his spyglass.
All at once she saw Madame standing by his side in full travelling
costume, and understood that they were going away without her.
Then she kicked out so that the planks of the bridge groaned and creaked
beneath her. Eight into the sea she plunged, and caught hold of the
anchor, and tugged and held the ship back till the cable broke.
Then head over heels she went with both her hoofs in the air.
But the yacht glided away under full sail, and the general dealer stood
there and laughed till he nearly fell overboard.
* * * * *
[1] A giantess, the wife of the mountain gnome, who rules in the
Dovrefeld.
[2] _I.e.,_ the general dealer's wife.
[3] Thin cakes that can be doubled in two and eaten with sirup.
[4] Boxes containing provisions for voyages or journeys.
[5] Flat cakes broken up with butter.
* * * * *
THE END.