THE MASON'S LITTLE PIGS
Ugh! I can't stand rainy weather! Especially in summer! Perhaps some
people may like a nasty drizzling rain that keeps on day after day right
in the middle of summer, so that the gooseberries drop from the bushes,
and there is only a soft wet plot of ground where one expected big,
magnificent strawberries and had joyfully kept watch for them day after
day. As for the rose-bushes, only the yellow hips are left on them. Half
decayed rose petals lie sprinkled on the wet earth, and the mignonette
and daisies lie flat on the ground all mouldy and limp.
Our old house on the hill is the most delightful house in town,--that is
really true--but in rainy weather it is perhaps a little wet up there.
All the water which gathers on the hilltop back of the house runs down
towards us, you see. It trickles and streams in brooks and tiny
waterfalls over the stones, through moss and heather, takes with it a
lot of earth from the kitchen garden (where, truth to tell, there wasn't
much beforehand), and washes out deep gullies in our hillside, leaving
only the clean stones. Every time that it rains really in earnest for
several days, Father has to put wagon-loads of new earth on the hill to
make it look a little respectable again.
Detestable as these long rainy spells are, Karsten and I have lots of
fun afterwards, when it has poured down by tubfuls for several days and
the hilltop is really soaking and running over with water.
Karsten and I build waterworks, you see; we build dams and make sluices
and waterfalls. That's fun, I can tell you!
Massa and Mina can't imagine how I can enjoy myself with anything like
that now that I am so old--thirteen. They make fun of me and tattle
about it at school and to the boys; but I don't bother myself the least
grain about that. I get my feet sopping wet, sure enough, and the bottom
of my dress, and way up my sleeves; and then I have to creep up the back
stairs to change my clothes so that Mother won't see how wet they are.
But oh! the fun Karsten and I have!
Sometimes we begin away back on the hilltop and make sluices, and wall
them up with heather and moss, so as to make the water run where we want
it to. Karsten carries the stones and gets fiery red in the face, even
with his hat off. I do the walling up and give the orders, for I am the
engineer, you see.
It must be awfully nice to be an engineer when you are grown up, but sad
to say, I never can be, since I am a girl. However, Karsten can be the
engineer and I can sit in his office and be the one to manage the whole
concern, just as I do on the hilltop here; for Karsten can never think
of anything new to do, but I can.
A little way down the hill we have our reservoir which all the streams
run into. It is in a particularly good place, a deep hollow close to the
top of the steepest precipice on the whole hill. All it needs is a
little walling up on one side, but that has to be very strong and solid;
for sometimes we have more than two feet of water in the reservoir, and
then it will easily overflow.
After we have it all built, comes the great moment of letting the
waterfall loose. Karsten and I each have a stout stake,--quick as
lightning we punch a hole through the dam, and down rushes the waterfall
over the precipice. The yellowish marsh water which we have led to the
pool from way back on the hilltop is one mass of white foam. It thunders
and crashes and spatters just like a real waterfall.
The only nuisance about it is that it lasts so short a time. Even if the
pond is full up to the brim the water can all run out in five minutes.
On that account we always try to let off the waterfall when there is
some one besides ourselves to see it. It doesn't matter who it is, even
if it is only the stone-breaker's child, but we must have at least one
spectator, or we shouldn't care to let off the waterfall.
Right on the slope below the precipice is the cottage of Soren, the
mason. Our land joins on to his farm. When we let out the waterfall the
water streams down over our land right behind the big walnut tree. It
had always taken the very same course and it never entered my head that
it _could_ take any other.
But now you shall hear. It had rained twelve days on a stretch, and that
just as the summer vacation had begun. In fact, it seems to me it always
does--every year. Well, never mind that. At any rate Karsten and I were
almost bored to death. It was all right for Karsten to stand out in the
rain and sail birch bark boats in the brewing vat which stood full of
water out in the farmyard, but I outgrew such play years ago, of course.
As for sitting and reading books in the very middle of the summer, there
is no sort of sense in that. At least _I_ don't think there is any fun
in it; so I will say outright that I was dreadfully bored.
Finally, one day, out came the sun. It shone and it glittered. The
grass, the fences, and the washed-out stones all dripped and sparkled as
the sun sent its blazing light upon them. And there wasn't a crack or a
crevice on the whole hilltop that wasn't brimming over with water.
Oh! what a waterfall we could make to-day!
"Karsten! Karsten! Will you come with me and make a waterfall?"
Karsten had been so desperately bored the afternoon before that he had
put up a swing in the loft. As I called him I saw his face up there in
the dusty green window. The second after, he was down in the yard, and
we were both off for the hilltop. The one single tool that we have to
work with is a little old trough which we use for dipping up water when
we need to.
Oh! such a summer day as it was up on that hilltop! with the sun
sparkling on the wet purple heather, on the blueberries and red
whortleberries and great wavy ferns covered with pearly water-drops!
But Karsten and I had something else to do, I can assure you, than to
look at all this beauty. For to-day we were going to make Niagara Falls!
We had water enough.
O my! how Karsten and I slaved that morning! We made an entirely new
watercourse so that we had ever so much more water for the pond. And
then the pond itself had to be made better and bigger. It was ready to
overflow any minute,--it was so full. Karsten slipped in twice and got
wet way above his knees. My! how we laughed!
It seemed as if there was always a little tuft of moss to stuff in or a
stone to lay in better position, in order to make the pond really tight
and firm; but at last we had it finished.
But now there was no one at hand, not a single person, to admire the
glorious sight of the waterfall, and I didn't want to have all our hard
work go for nothing. Karsten wanted to let the waterfall loose anyway,
but I wouldn't do it, and we had almost got into a quarrel when, as
good luck would have it, Thora Heja came trudging along across the
hilltop. Thora Heja is an old peasant woman who used to work in the
fields but now goes round getting her living by drowning cats and
cutting hens' heads off for people.
"Thora Heja, where are you going?" I called out.
"Oh! I am going down to attend to two hens at the sexton's," shouted
Thora across to us.
"Wait a little and you shall see Niagara Falls!"
"See what?"
"Wait a little and you shall see something wonderful!"
Karsten and I grabbed our big stakes and quick as lightning tore away
the dam. However it happened, I really don't know, but it must be that
we tore away some big stones we had never disturbed before, and that our
doing this made the whole waterfall take an entirely different
direction. It foamed and crashed--you couldn't hear yourself think!--It
was really magnificent.
"Hurrah!" shouted Karsten and I.
But right through the tremendous roar of the waterfall, there came
cleaving the air the wildest pig squeal you ever heard, from the ground
down below us. The waterfall kept on roaring, and the pig squeals grew
worse and worse.
It never occurred to me for a moment that the pig squeals had anything
to do with our waterfall. We couldn't see what was going on below from
where we stood. I thought Thora Heja was behaving in the queerest way,
however, for instead of standing quietly and admiring the waterfall as
we had expected, she began to shriek and point and throw up her arms
beseechingly and try to tell us something; finally she took to her heels
and vanished through the wet grass down the steep hillside, shouting and
screaming as she went.
Soon after we heard many voices down below all talking at once, but the
waterfall kept on with its rush and noise, for, as I have said, there
was a tremendous lot of water in the pond that day. All this happened in
a much shorter time than it takes me to write it, you know.
I heard Soren, the mason's, angry voice.
"Such a thing as this sha'n't be permitted! I won't have it--not if I
swing for it! Even if it is the judge's children themselves----"
A sudden suspicion popped into my head.
"Karsten! Something must have gone wrong with our waterfall!"
"I'll run down and see!"
"No! Are you crazy? Don't go! Can't you hear how angry Soren, the mason,
is?"
By this time the whole pond had emptied itself out. The waterfall had
subsided into little trickling rills, coursing in straggling lines down
the precipice. Then Soren, the mason, appeared in the distance, having
reached a piece of ground where he could look across to where we were.
[Illustration: 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 we _had_
come 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.