And it really is. All the desks, the window-sills, the maps, even up
on the platform around Mr. Bu’s elbows on his desk, I have to dust.
It was only once I did that, however.
At recess I clean the ink-wells. I think it is fun to do such things.
Sometimes I dust the ledges of the logs that make the walls, so that
the dusting shall last as long as possible; for it is much pleasanter
to go about dusting than to sit still at your desk.
Well, it was one summer day just before vacation. Such sunshine you
never saw. The sea was one mass of sparkles; two or three mackerel
boats lay outside the islands. Oh, to row out there now, to sit in
the boat and dabble in the blue-green water, to land on Marcussen’s
Island, and run up on the hill there and shout and play and enjoy
yourself!
But no. I must go to school; and I didn’t know a word of my lesson
which was about Olaf Kyrre. I had been certain the evening before
that I should have time to study my “History of Norway” in the
morning; but let me tell you, it isn’t safe to depend on time ahead
that way. There wasn’t a minute. I had to dash down the hill through
the dean’s garden to get to school in time, and even then I only just
got there before the bell rang.
The dust lay thick everywhere. It was highly necessary for me to
be on hand, that was evident. But would you believe it? Antoinette
Wium had taken it upon herself to begin to put the room in order and
manage things; but she soon found out her mistake.
“No, Miss,” said I. “Be so good as to sit down. It is I who shall do
this. Do you suppose Mr. Bu wants so much confusion here? Be so good
as to take your seat and keep quiet.”
So Antoinette had to go back to her desk. Mr. Bu said nothing but I
could see plainly that he agreed with me. Of course there should be
order and quiet in the class-room.
Mr. Bu is rather queer, however. When the weather is fine, he leans
out of the window the whole lesson hour, asks the questions out in
the air and we answer from where we sit, back in the room. We get
awfully lively, you may be sure, but when there is too much noise
behind him, he comes in from the window, very angry.
“You’ll get marked for this; you’ll get marked for such behavior,” he
says, shaking his forefinger at us and glaring fiercely around the
class-room. But we know very well that he won’t give us any marks,
for Mr. Bu is after all very easy-going.
Antoinette Wium was highly offended with me because I would not allow
her to attend to the class-room. While Mr. Bu was hanging out of the
window, a ball of paper hit me suddenly on the head. On the inside of
the paper was written:
“There ought to be a limit to self-conceit as well as to other
things. You are the most conceited person in the whole world, Inger
Johanne High-and-Mighty. Mother says so, too.”
Pooh! That fat Mrs. Wium who goes through the streets with her
market-basket, and the neck of her dress unfastened! As if I cared
the least bit for her. I wrote a note in reply immediately:
“Whether your mother likes me or not is for me a bagatelle.”
I really must ask if you don’t think that that was well said?
The bell rang, Mr. Bu came in from the window, assigned our new
lesson and the class was dismissed.
Well, that was good. In this recess I must learn what I could about
Olaf Kyrre, for I didn’t know the least speck about him. But there
was no studying for me, I assure you, for the instant Mr. Bu shut the
door, Antoinette came at me, angry as could be because I had called
her mother a bagatelle, she said.
“It may easily be that your mother is a bagatelle,” said I. “But I
never called her that.”
“Yes, you did,” said Antoinette.
“No, I didn’t,” said I.
We kept on disputing that way the whole recess. I held my “History of
Norway” in my hand but didn’t get a chance to see a word in it.
Pshaw! Now we must have arithmetic. There stood Mr. Holmesland at the
door.
“Mental arithmetic! Mental arithmetic!” shouted the class. “Let us
have mental arithmetic.”
Mr. Holmesland is a stout man with sleepy-looking eyes and a reddish
beard. He said never a word, but walked up to his desk and sat down
with his hand under his cheek as usual.
“Written arithmetic,” he said emphatically when he was well settled.
“Oh, no, Mr. Holmesland! Mental arithmetic, mental——”
“When I was outside the door,” said Mr. Holmesland, “I thought that
we should have mental arithmetic to-day, but since you shouted and
screamed so, I decided that you should not have it.”
A grumbling murmur came from all the desks.
“Written arithmetic,” said Mr. Holmesland again. His water-blue eyes
looked as if they would shut any minute.
As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely the same whether it is
mental or written arithmetic, for I am equally poor in both.
Isn’t it remarkable that I cannot do anything with numbers? Just
think, I believe it would be perfectly impossible for me to do a
“rule of three” example correctly! How I shall manage when I come
to higher mathematics I can’t imagine, especially if we have Mr.
Holmesland. He only looks heavily down at you and lets it go, and one
can’t learn a great deal that way. At any rate I can’t, I’m sure of
that. But the most elaborate and difficult problems in arithmetic are
just “rat for cat” to Anna Brynildsen. She gets every one correct to
the last dot. That’s the kind of head she has.
When she goes up to Mr. Holmesland’s desk, gets “Correct” on all her
examples, and comes down again with that unspeakably self-satisfied
look of hers, she is so exasperating to me that I feel like flying
right at her and knocking her over. My! Suppose I should do it some
day!
I worked out four examples that hour. One I really thought was right,
but the others I had no hope of.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Mr. Holmesland, as he drew a heavy
mark through them all.
Pshaw!
“You are most remarkably incapable as an arithmetician,” said Mr.
Holmesland. “I believe if any one asked you how many eyes you had,
you would make a mistake in counting them.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the pupils at their desks, Anna Brynildsen
with them—she who seldom laughs at anything. She laughed so
exasperatingly, too, keeping her mouth tight shut, and not making any
sound except “h’m, h’m, h’m.”
At last the bell rang and I rushed around opening windows. Fresh air
I must have.
Anna Brynildsen took up her lunch-box and began to eat her
sandwiches, made with sausage. She spends the whole recess eating.
This was the time to study my history lesson; but as I threw open the
farthest window, the one that looks out on a little grassy place,
I suddenly had an irresistible desire to jump out into that green
grass. Although our class-room is on the first floor, it is quite far
from the ground, because the foundation of the building is so high.
Massa wanted to jump out, too, so out we went, I with my history book
in my hand. Thump, thump! It was lots of fun. Other girls jumped out
after us, thump, thump, thump!
Anna Brynildsen was the only one of the class who didn’t jump out.
She stood at the window eating her bread and sausage.
We stormed back into the room, out of the window again, every one of
us. What uproarious fun we had!
And then, my gracious, if recess wasn’t over!
Ugh! Olaf Kyrre. I read hastily as we went into the class-room.
Mr. Juul, who teaches our history class, was already there. Such a
beautiful nose as he has! It could be a model for a sculptor, it is
so finely shaped.
Mr. Juul swung himself up to his chair on the platform.
“Close the windows,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Juul! Let us have one open; just one!”
“Close the windows, I say.”
Pshaw! We have to sit as if in a box with the lid on when Mr. Juul
has the class.
Now for the lesson. How in the world should I get along when I didn’t
know anything at all about him,—that bothersome old Olaf Kyrre.
I had a faint hope that Mr. Juul might forget to call on me. I
wouldn’t even look at him for fear that might remind him of me; and I
made myself as small as possible and sat as still as a stone.
“Kima Pirk, please begin.”
Kima stood up and began to rattle off something. She almost never
knows the lesson, but when she is called upon to recite, she swallows
and mutters and stutters and uses her mouth so queerly that it is
almost impossible to understand anything she says.
For once, I was glad to hear her. Mr. Juul always calls on us in
regular order, and since he had begun with Kima, who sat at the
farthest end of the class from me, I should escape.
Oh, what a relief!—that I should not be called upon to recite.
Kima sputtered and stammered. Meanwhile I made a beautiful chicken
out of paper, under my desk.
“What kind of a king was Olaf Kyrre?—Inger Johanne.”
I jumped up.
“He was—he was very bloodthirsty.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, no,—he was very brave—only a little bloodthirsty.”
Mr. Juul went over to the window to get himself a glass of water.
Quick as a flash, I opened my history, placing another book so as to
hide it. When Mr. Juul was in his seat again, I read a whole half
page as if I knew it by rote.
I cast a glance at Mr. Juul. He was looking intently at me with those
brown eyes of his.
“Inger Johanne! If I had not seen it myself, I should never have
believed it, never—that you would cheat!”
“Inger Johanne cheated?” “Inger Johanne?” “Cheated?” different voices
called in loud whispers from the desks as all the class turned and
stretched their necks to look at me.
Oh, how sorry, how sorry I was! How I wished I had not done it.
Sorry, ashamed, disgraced!
“You may go out into the hall, Inger Johanne, and stay there the rest
of the hour,” said Mr. Juul in a deep voice.
I went out, every one in the class still staring at me.
I had been sent out into the hall before, but that was because I had
been too lively; never for cheating. Never in my life for cheating.
Oh, what a disgrace! What a disgrace! It was the very worst thing I
could have done. What would Father say when he saw the marks in my
report book? For I should surely be marked; I saw that by Mr. Juul’s
manner. Oh, I should never in the world be happy again, never! How
could I be?
I don’t know whether any of you ever stood out in the hall a whole
hour, thinking of the marks you would get and the scoldings. Well,
it is not at all comfortable. As the time dragged on, I could think
of nothing to do but to reach up as far as I could on the walls and
destroy the spider webs, setting free the captured flies that hung in
the webs, buzzing.
At last the hour came to an end. All the class looked hard at me when
I went back into the room. No one said anything, they only stared.
“Pooh!” said I, tossing my head and pretending there was nothing
the matter; but I had to own to myself that it was frightfully
embarrassing.
I would not go out at recess; no, not for anything would I go out. I
sat at my desk the whole time and sketched pen-and-ink heads on a new
blotting-paper. I felt as if I should never play any more, I was so
disgusted with myself. Oh, no one should ever, ever cheat!
How remorseful I was, and how miserable, as I sat there alone that
recess, while the girls were chattering and laughing and having a
jolly time together out-of-doors!
During the last two hours of school we have Norwegian composition
with the school principal. We had written compositions upon “Our
Country’s Productions,” and they were to be returned to us on this
day. Usually the hours with the principal are the pleasantest any one
could have, but to-day everything was horrid for me.
Mr. Juul had, of course, told him that I had been cheating. I
scarcely dared look at him.
When the lesson time came to an end, the principal said, “Inger
Johanne, come with me to my office.”
What he said to me in there I shall never tell. It made me terribly
unhappy and I cried and cried. Never, oh! never in my life would I
cheat again. Probably the principal was sure of that, too, because he
did not put any bad mark in my report-book.
As soon as I got home, however, I told Mother what I had done, for
everything is easier to bear, somehow, no matter what it is, if I
only tell Mother.
XIV
THE TIME I NEARLY DROWNED
Oh yes—that time——
In reality, this story isn’t much to my credit, but you shall hear it
nevertheless.
You ought to see how many queer persons there are in our town. I mean
persons who are not exactly right in their minds, but who are allowed
to go about because they never do any harm. I used to think it was
great fun to run after them and tease them, but I never do that any
more; and the reason I do not is just what I am going to tell you
about.
Well, Mrs. Lennertsen is one of these queer persons. She is awfully
dressy, wears a French shawl that trails on the ground and carries a
blue silk parasol with a jointed handle so that it can be turned at
different angles. When any one greets her, she stands stockstill and
makes a grand curtsey such as we learn at dancing-school. She is so
old that there are criss-cross wrinkles all over her face.
With every single ship that comes in Mrs. Lennertsen expects seven
barrels of gold, neither more nor less. Under her shawl she carries
a whip and is not at all slow in bringing it out to use if any one
teases her; and she is awfully comical then. But I never tease her
any more, I really don’t.
Well, then there is Jens Julsen, with a humpy nose such as the
ancient kings of Oldenborg had. He wears a worn-out silk hat and
sings songs, one after the other, incessantly. After each song he
says, “Finis,” and immediately starts a new one.
But never mind about Jens Julsen now. Evan “Henny-Penny” (I don’t
know his real last name) is the one this story is about. He is
small and rosy-cheeked and wears a gray coat that reaches down
to his shoes; and he carries a big staff that is much longer
than himself. It is really a big, stout fence rail, and you can
understand what a long way he can reach and hit with that. He was
once a school-teacher, but now he lives at the old yellow poorhouse,
although he usually spends the whole day on the wharf. There is
no one that all of us children have been so horrid to as to Evan
Henny-Penny.
Whenever he showed himself at the street corner we were after him,
shouting, teasing, and snatching at his coat. The rough boys from the
Point may have treated him shamefully, but among the children in our
part of the town, I believe I was the worst.
Every single day I thought of some new way to tease him. Of course,
at that time, it seemed mighty good fun; now it makes me loathe
myself to think how I plagued him, for if it had not been for that
queer little Evan——
It was one afternoon in October. The weather was just the kind that I
like so much, a strong gale blowing from the sea, high tide washing
over the wharf, and a rumbling, roaring sound like thunder in the
air. The big ash-trees near the church writhed and creaked and
groaned; the weather-vane turned round and round, squeaking every
minute. All that blowing and stir and noise everywhere suits me
exactly. I just love it.
But I could never get any of my friends to enjoy it with me.
“Ugh! No.—Are you going out in such weather?” they say when I ask
them to go. “Ugh! Such frightful weather.”
So I go alone, up on the hills, or down on the wharf, or anywhere.
That day, too, I was alone. I had gone to the big ice-house at South
Bay, because some one had said that a big ship was adrift out there
and I wanted to see it. But, if you please, that was all bosh—there
was neither ship nor anything else worth looking at in South Bay.
When I go off alone that way I think of tremendously entertaining
things. I think of families with ever so many children and the
jolly times they have. I know how all the people I invent look,
and what they say, and what they do; and they travel over the whole
wide world. I decide everything for them. I am queen over them all.
To invent this way is the most entertaining thing in the world.
Sometimes I tell Karen and Mina about it, but I can see plainly that
they don’t understand at all what I mean.
“Do you know these people?” asked Karen once.
“No, I just invent them, you know.”
“Can there be any fun in that?” sniffed Karen, scornfully. Since then
I never talk about what I think of when I am alone.
I remember well that as I walked to the icehouse at South Bay that
afternoon I made up a story about two little girls who traveled alone
all the way to Egypt to visit an awfully rich uncle.
Since there was no ship or anything interesting to be seen, I sat
down on the edge of the wharf, thinking it would be fun to see
whether the waves would dash high enough to wet my legs if I
stretched them far down. One wave after another came rolling in,
black but topped with white foam. Whack!—splash!—one struck against
the wharf. No, it did not reach me. Now another wave,—an enormous
one—but that did not reach me either.
Some one came pattering along behind me. I turned around and saw Evan
Henny-Penny with his long staff.
“Is that you, Henny-Penny?” I called.
“You’ll fall into the water if you sit there,” said Evan.
“Shall I really, Henny-Penny?”
He came nearer, right to where I was sitting. I got up hastily. I am
not in the least afraid of Evan, but for all that, it made me feel
queer to have him come so close to me with that long staff of his.
As you can well understand, I hadn’t a clear conscience with regard
to Evan, so horrid as I had always been to him with my teasing and
calling him names.
When I had run a few steps away from him, I got hold of a little
stick and began to tease him. I danced round and round him, poked
him with the stick and sang a nonsense song that always made him
frightfully angry:
“Anna Pelanna with light blue beard,
If you live till summer
You’ll lay an egg,
You’ll lay an egg——”
“If I once get hold of you, you young villain,” said Evan Henny-Penny.
He tried to hit me with his stick, time after time, while I kept on
dancing round and round him and chanting, “You’ll lay an egg. You’ll
lay——”
Without knowing it, I had danced to the very edge of the wharf
and—splash! over I went, down into the black water.
Never to my dying day shall I forget that moment. To fall and fall,
to feel the ice-cold water covering me, nothing to catch hold of,
knowing myself sinking—— The water seemed to freeze my very heart. I
tried to scream, but could not; the water thundered in my ears. I
clutched with both hands—everything failed me—only ice-cold water—I
sank—sank——
I came up again. Oh, there was the wharf! I gave a piercing shriek,
then—what was that? Something was let down from the wharf, something
that moved. I grabbed it, and recognized it as Evan Henny-Penny’s
staff. Keeping tight hold with both hands, I felt the staff pulled
from above. How little Evan managed it, I can’t understand. People
who heard about it afterward said it was a perfect miracle, but up to
the wharf he drew me, till I could catch hold of the edge. Then he
grasped my arms, pulled and pulled with all his might, and there I
was on the wharf.
“Oh, Evan—Evan! Don’t be angry, Evan,” were the first words I said.
“I got you up,” said Evan, with a sly smile. “You screamed horribly
there by the wharf.”
“Come home with me, Evan,” I said. “Please do.”
[Illustration: I FELT THE STAFF PULLED FROM ABOVE.—_Page 196._]
I felt that I must have him go home with me or I couldn’t thank him
enough.
“Not a bit of it. You needn’t think I’ll do that,” answered Evan
Henny-Penny.
So I had to run home alone, in my dripping clothes. My teeth
chattered, I was so cold. I ran all the way, and right up-stairs to
Gunhild, who put me to bed and sent some one to call Mother.
Oh, how I cried when I got to bed—because it was Evan Henny-Penny who
had saved me; Evan, whom I had teased and been so horrid to, always,
always!
“Oh, Mother, Mother! You must give Evan a lot to eat—lots of good
things!”
“Yes, child, you may be sure I shall; but you must beg his pardon for
behaving so outrageously to him, Inger Johanne; and you must never
tease him or any other such poor creatures again.”
Since that October afternoon Evan has had dinner at our house every
single day. When we have anything especially good, I am glad for
his sake. I always look out that the best isn’t all eaten up at our
table, but that Evan, out in the kitchen, gets a good big portion.
And now I never tease any of them any more, never,—Mrs. Lennertsen,
Jens Julsen, or Evan; and if anybody else attempts it when I am
around, I put an end to it pretty quickly, you may depend upon that.
I run after a policeman immediately. Not after Mr. Weiby, who would
only say, “Well, well. Off with you!” but after Mr. Skarnes, who
takes them by the neck and strikes out with his club. Of course, all
the children are terribly afraid of him, so teasing is getting out of
fashion in our town, I am happy to say.
XV
SURPRISING THE CLOCKMAKER
Never in my life have I liked Clockmaker Krause, and for that I have
three good reasons. The first is that he never bows to me, although
Consul Gjertz and the Chief of Police take off their hats to me when
I curtsey—and he also might do as much as that, I think.
The second reason is that I can’t bear the way he carries himself
when he walks. Some persons stoop forward, but Clockmaker Krause
leans over back. From his heels to the top of his head, his figure
makes a slanting line backward just like the mast of a sailboat in a
heavy sea. He carries himself that way just because he thinks himself
of so much consequence.
The third reason for my not liking him is that he has nailed some
boards together in the fence around his yard, so that we can’t run
through that short way when the clock says ten minutes to nine and
we are rushing to school in a hurry. It is really awfully mean of
Clockmaker Krause to do that, for it can’t hurt him a mite if we run
through his yard two or three times a day.
Clockmaker Krause is never out except in the evening, when there is
moonlight; and he never walks farther than from his own steps to the
deacon’s fence—from the deacon’s fence to his own steps;—that’s the
way he keeps on,—and he looks like a thin slanting streak in the
moonlight.
I really believe it was Teresa Billington’s fault that the fence was
nailed together. Yes, I’m sure we can thank her for that. Teresa is
housekeeper for Clockmaker Krause, and she is even more exasperating
to me than he is. She is fat and pale and the expression of her face
never changes; and when people are consequential like Krause and with
such a set face as Teresa’s, I call it exasperating. She has nothing
to feel high and mighty about. She is not from our town.
Although her expression is so set, I made her change it once, at
any rate. It was one summer evening when I was allowed to ride
the truckman’s horse home. This man lived a little outside of the
town; and there were many persons on the road taking a walk in the
twilight. As I rode along, I suddenly saw Teresa Billington with her
red parasol and her disgustingly haughty air. “Now I’ll just see if
I can’t make that set expression change,” I thought, and with that I
turned the big horse towards her and rode right close to her.
Goodness gracious! You may well believe that her face took on a
different look. The red parasol dropped into the road, Teresa
Billington opened her mouth wide and shrieked and stretched her
arms up against the steep hillside. It was impossible for her to go
anywhere, you see, for the bank was straight up and down like a wall.
But I very calmly turned the horse and rode on my way.
Another time that Teresa was angry with me was about the kittens,
but that time I was innocent. It was Mrs. Pussy’s fault. Our dear
delightful Mrs. Pussy had four little kittens and I put them in a
basket in our attic. It was a fine basket, beautifully trimmed with
lace and with a doll’s blanket in the bottom of it; but, only think!
Mrs. Pussy wouldn’t stay there.
Clockmaker Krause lives a little way from us, back on the hill. In
his yard there is a tumble-down woodshed and in its attic, yes,
there, if you please, was where Mrs. Pussy wanted to keep her
kittens. One by one she carried them, holding them by the neck, from
that lace-trimmed basket in our attic, up the hill and into the loft
of that rickety woodshed of Krause’s. Naturally I followed her, and,
sure enough, on a heap of rags in a corner lay Mrs. Pussy purring,
with all the four black, silky-soft kittens scrambling over her.
The very minute I got up there Teresa Billington came also.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice quivering, for she
was in a regular rage.
“I am just taking our kittens away,” I said, gathering them up in my
apron.