Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
WHAT HAPPENED
TO
INGER JOHANNE
[Illustration: Mina and I hauled her up by the arms into the
boat.--_Page 22._]
WHAT HAPPENED
TO
INGER JOHANNE
AS TOLD BY HERSELF
Translated from the Norwegian of
DIKKEN ZWILGMEYER
_by_ EMILIE POULSSON
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED _by_
FLORENCE LILEY YOUNG
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, October, 1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
_All Rights Reserved_
What Happened to Inger Johanne
_Norwood Press_
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
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:
"Ho, hei for Laaringa!"
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.