them right if they had their heads chopped off,” said Teresa. “And
such gad-about children, too,” she shouted down the ladder after me.
“Children that grow up to be nothing but nuisances to other folks.”
* * * * *
Well, later came the time that I planned the surprise for Clockmaker
Krause. One moonlight night he was walking up and down the street as
usual. Karen and I went past him again and again and curtsied every
time, but he looked only at the moon. Then we took a great notion to
play some joke on him; and do you know what we did?
The clocks in his shop had struck seven almost at one and the same
instant. Some boomed slowly in deep muffled tones, some rang delicate
quick strokes. It sounded like chimes when all his clocks were
striking.
The clockmaker had just gone away from his steps, and we knew that
there was no one in the shop when he took these little walks.
“I’m going to run in and move the hands of all the clocks around to
eight,” said I. “So the next time Krause comes to his shop door, they
will strike again. My! What a surprise it will be for him, won’t it?”
Karen was to stand outside and whistle through her fingers if Krause
came down the street sooner than we expected.
I dashed up the high flight of stone steps into the shop and shoved
the hands quickly around on five clocks. Just then Karen whistled
furiously through her fingers—right under the window—and I heard
Krause on the stone steps.
Never shall I forget my fright. I ducked down behind the counter in
the darkest corner, and there I lay. Sin brought its own punishment
that time, I can tell you, for it was horrible lying there expecting
every minute to be discovered. Krause busied himself with something
over on a table; then two of the clocks whose hands I had moved began
to strike, and the strokes rang out sharp and clear in the stillness.
Krause turned hastily around.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed aloud. Another clock began to strike,
then another and another. I can’t describe how I felt as I lay there
and heard them.
Krause could scarcely believe his own ears.
“What in the world is the matter?” he exclaimed. “The clocks are all
striking eight, five minutes after they have struck seven!”
Just then Karen whistled again under the window.
“It’s those rascally young ones who have been doing mischief here!”
shouted Krause suddenly, and he rushed headlong out-of-doors.
That was my salvation; for Krause naturally thought that whoever had
meddled with his clocks was out in the street. He had no idea that I
was lying behind his counter.
When he had dashed out, it didn’t take me long to get out either,
I can tell you! Down the stone steps in two hops, up the street
and around Mrs. Milberg’s corner; and there I was—safe. Karen came
breathlessly the other way through Miss Fretteland’s garden. Krause
had not seen her, either, and joyful indeed were we at our escape.
A little later we, with a most innocent air, walked up and down past
Clockmaker Krause, who stood in his doorway watching. But would you
believe it? I was found out after all! Now you shall hear.
The next morning when I was on my way to school, Teresa stood at the
clockmaker’s door.
“Are not these yellow gloves yours?” she asked.
Yes, of course they were mine. They were deep yellow and very
stylish, and I made a great display of them whenever I had them on.
“Well, well. They are yours, are they? They lay on the floor in the
shop, so perhaps you know who it was went in there and ruined all the
clocks for Krause.”
“Ruined them?” I said aghast, looking up at Teresa in real fright.
“Krause, Krause!” called Teresa. “Come out here.”
But I dared not stay any longer to talk with Teresa, for it was late
and I must hurry to school; so I took to my heels and ran away, not
sorry to avoid meeting the clockmaker.
At school I felt all the time that there was something weighing upon
me, something disagreeable. Nothing was pleasant. I got “one” on my
composition about “Love of Country,” but even that did not cheer me.
What Teresa had said,—that I had ruined the clocks,—was too dreadful.
Suppose Krause said I must pay for those five big clocks! Ugh! I was
so upset that my heart was in my mouth all day.
By now Krause had probably been up to see Father. For a moment I
thought I would not go home that day; I would go up on the hill and
eat frozen whortleberries for dinner,—or stay down on the wharf all
day and sleep in our old barn, and never go home any more,—or go off
in a steamship. Oh, what should I do? What should I do?
When school was over I went around by the wharf to drag out the time.
Every one had gone home to dinner but myself and Constable Stiksrud,
and it was absolutely still over the whole market-place. A dog barked
up by the corner and Stiksrud turned around quickly with an angry
face. Everything is to be very quiet and orderly at the market-place
in our town, you see.
“Aren’t you going home to your dinner?” asked Stiksrud, at last. So
of course I had to go.
As soon as I got home I had a suspicion that they knew what I had
done. There was a heavy feeling in the air at the dinner table.
Everybody was so silent—so silent! I ate all the soup from my
plate—something I seldom do. I didn’t believe Father was silent
because he knew about the clocks, for he always keeps still at meals;
but Mother usually talks, and to-day there wasn’t a word breathed
from behind the soup tureen.
After we had finished dinner, the blow came. Mother called me into
the pantry.
“Clockmaker Krause’s housekeeper has been up here, Inger Johanne. You
have been doing something wrong again, haven’t you?”
“No, Mother—I don’t believe I ruined the clocks—I only—I only shoved
the hands around—very quickly, you know——”
“Shoved the hands, you say?”
“Yes—just for fun, Mother—don’t be angry—just so that the clocks
should strike again—Krause would be so surprised.”
Mother looked thoughtfully out of the pantry window.
“Well, we shall have to see about finding a way out of all this;
perhaps we ought to send you to boarding-school in Germany, for you
are really as wild as the worst boy.”
“No, no, Mother. Don’t send me away—I’ll never think of any more
mischief—I’ll be so good——”
“The heart is good enough,” said Mother, opening the pantry door.
“But, my dear Inger Johanne, don’t let me hear any more complaints
about you.”
Ugh! They always threaten me with these horrid boarding-schools,
where I should learn to behave properly. When I have done something
that is a little bad, then I am to go to boarding-school in
Sondfjord, but when I have been perfectly wild, as Mother calls
it—then I am to go to Germany or to Pommeren, wherever that is.
However, none of the clocks were damaged at all. Teresa had only
said they were ruined to frighten me. But just think! I never got my
yellow gloves back. Teresa kept them and I couldn’t bear to ask her
for them.
Well, that’s the way I surprised Clockmaker Krause, and I got more
trouble than fun out of it. However, I shall never curtsey to him any
more; he may depend upon that.
XVI
GHOSTS
All the people in the town think that our house is haunted. They say
that old Customs Officer Borgen, who used to own the house and who
has been dead for many, many years is the ghost that haunts it.
The house is awfully old, with a tremendously long sloping roof, a
big garret, lots of closets and poke-holes under the eaves, and a
pitch-dark hall with unexpected steps, over which people who don’t
know about them tumble head over heels.
Above the big garret, in the high peak of the roof, there are two
lofts, one above the other; and it is in the topmost loft that the
old customs officer walks about and busies himself; at least, so
people say.
“V-s-s-s,” sounds from up there, and a little while after, “Bum,
bum, bum.” It may be the wind in under the roof-tiles that says,
“V-s-s-s,” but no one can explain the “Bum, bum, bum.” That must be
the customs officer, you see.
The maids are always afraid to go to the uppermost loft after dark,
and really it isn’t pleasant to go up there when it is light, either.
It seems so queer, somehow, as if some one stood behind you all the
time who would grab hold of your dress or your braids. Karsten is
just as afraid as I am, but he will never own it; he just brags.
“Pooh! It’s nothing. Girls and women are afraid of everything. Well,
here’s the boy so strong that he could and would throttle seven
customs officers, if necessary.”
Ugh! Karsten has grown so conceited lately that he is beyond
everything. He is always saying that I am nothing but a girl, but
that he is a boy, he is. (Oh, you wait, Karsten Cocky-cub; you’ll get
paid for such talk, depend upon it.)
The thought of the customs officer wouldn’t bother me much if I
didn’t need now and then to go into the top loft, but I do need to,
you see. Up there in one corner lies a great heap of papers that old
Mr. Borgen left in the house, stiff yellow papers with accounts on
them. Whenever Karsten and I want any paper,—and that is almost every
day, you know,—we are allowed to take what we need from that heap.
Mother doesn’t like us to bring too much of the old dusty paper down
at one time, and that’s why I have to go up often for it. But I go
like the wind up and back again. Not that I have ever seen old Mr.
Borgen there, but it isn’t pleasant to think that he rambles around
the loft in his felt shoes and with a shade over his eyes. That’s the
way he looks, people say.
One evening Father and Mother were going out to a party, and Karsten
and I would be alone at home, except that I was to have Massa and
Mina to supper. The weather was perfectly horrid that night. The
wind wrestled with the old maple-trees around the house, pulled
and tugged at them till they creaked. The branches of the pear-tree
outside the drawing-room windows swayed to and fro and struck against
the panes.
We had been romping at a great rate all the afternoon before dark,
and had danced so hard that the drawing-room floor shook, and
Ingeborg, the cook, had come up from the basement to know whether we
were going to tear the house down. But we didn’t bother ourselves
about what she said, for she is always fussy.
Later we teased Karsten, chasing him through all the rooms, the
parlor, the little room, dining-room, living-room and out through the
kitchen; and we kept shouting at him:
“Karsten Cocky-Cub,
In a half butter-tub.”
The boys at school call him that, and it always makes him furious.
His white hair was standing straight up, his face was fiery red.
Suddenly he turned and sprang towards us, waving a piece of knotted
rope which he said was a Russian “knout.” Massa, Mina, and I
screeched like locomotive whistles, hid behind doors and shrieked
again in terror when Karsten caught us.
Just then Ingeborg appeared again and said in her scolding voice,
“Now, children, don’t you know you shouldn’t race and romp like this
so late in the evening, and here in this house where it isn’t safe,
and in such weather?”
“Look out for the customs officer, Ingeborg; he’ll soon be here,”
shouted Karsten.
Ingeborg shook her fist at him. “Don’t talk ugly, boy; he may come
before you think.”
I don’t know why it was, but suddenly I lost all desire for noisy
fun. I proposed that we go into the drawing-room again. Great, broken
clouds hurried over the sky, the moon shone out now and then and
gleamed into the room, bright and clear between the leafless, swaying
branches.
I should much rather have had the lamps lighted, but since the others
preferred sitting in the dark I said nothing. We packed ourselves
together on a sofa in a corner. The moon had gone behind a cloud now,
the branches kept tapping, tapping, the big room was perfectly dark
and had grown cold, too.
“Let’s tell ghost-stories,” suggested Massa. “I suppose you have
heard about Eyvind who met a ghost in the churchyard once.”
“Oh, Massa! don’t tell that. I’m so afraid I’m going to put my feet
up on the sofa,” said Mina.
All of us must have our feet up, even Karsten the braggart.
“Well, people say, you know, that the attic in this house is
haunted,” said Massa.
“Yes, but that is only nonsense,” said Karsten scornfully.
“Don’t you be so superior, Karsten boy,” I said. “You would not dare
to go up in the top loft, not for a million dollars.”
“Yes, indeed, I dare.”
“Well, go then.”
“That would be the easiest thing in the world for me,” Karsten
announced; “but there is nothing brave about going up there now.”
“Oh, he’s afraid!” “Shame on him!” “It’s a disgrace for a boy to be
afraid.”
We taunted and teased him, all three of us, and pointed scornful
fingers at him. “Sha-a-me!”
“I’d just as soon go up there this very minute, if that’s what you
want,” said Karsten, stoutly.
Yes, it was exactly what we wanted. Another long argument from him,
more and more teasing from us; at last he was sick of it.
“Well, I’m going. You shall see I’m no ’fraid-cat, not I.” And out of
the door he ran. We heard him tramp up the attic stairs, and stumble
around making all the noise he could as he crossed the long garret.
Never had I admired Karsten so much. He isn’t anything to admire in
daily life, more’s the pity, but when he ran up to that haunted
attic I had to admire him.
Down-stairs on the sofa we listened with nerves on edge. The
wind whined and roared; there came a sudden, violent blast down
the chimney, but we heard not a sound from Karsten. Oh, how
terror-stricken I was! Suppose the ghost was choking Karsten that
moment, and it was I who had teased him into going up there.
I sprang to the door. “Oh, Karsten, Karsten, come down! Come down!”
“Bum, bum, bum!” sounded with frightful distinctness from the loft.
“Did you hear that? Oh, oh, oh, Karsten, Karsten!”
A fresh blast of wind came, the hall door blew open, and in the very
same instant there was such a bang and a crash up in the attic as
I never heard the equal of. It sounded exactly like an earthquake.
It’s true there’s never been an earthquake in our town and I don’t
know what kind of noise it would make, but I imagine it would be
just about as loud and terrifying as that thundering commotion in the
loft. I thought I should die of fright. Massa, Mina, and I clung to
each other.
“Oh, I shall die! My heart is thumping dreadfully,” I said.
Just then we heard Karsten. He darted through the hall in a flash,
wild with fright.
“Oh, oh, oh, the customs officer said ‘V-s-s-s’ right in my ear!”
We took no long time to think, I assure you, but rushed all together
to the door of the drawing-room that led into Father’s office. We did
not dare run through the hall, for the customs officer was surely
right on Karsten’s heels. It was perfectly pitch-dark in the office.
Mina upset a chair as she ran, Massa dashed into a bookcase and
screamed. My knees shook so that my legs would scarcely carry me when
I got to the office entry.
There is only one door from the office to the courtyard. The
important thing now was to unbolt this outside door quickly. Oh,
how I pulled! At last I got the door open and the cold outside air
struck us. I felt that we were saved as we rushed out into the black
night.
“Let’s run home to my house,” said Massa.
So down the hill we all sprang in desperate haste, Karsten leading.
How the wind blew! Not a person was to be seen on the whole street
down which we ran as if for our lives.
We came within an inch of frightening the wits out of Massa’s mother
when we rushed in upon her, white as a sheet and panting for breath.
We could scarcely speak we were so terrified.
“Oh! Oh! Such a terrible noise, Mrs. Peckell,” I exclaimed. “Exactly
like Pompeii.” I meant “Vesuvius,” but I didn’t remember the right
name that minute.
When we had quieted down and had eaten some fig-cake and sweetmeats,
we found to our amazement that Karsten denied positively that he had
been afraid.
“I ran because you ran,” said he. “And it was just because it was
so dark up there that I ran down from the loft. I am not a cat to
see in the dark. The rumbling was terrible and something whispered
‘V-s-s-s’ close to my ears; but if the customs officer himself had
come he’d have got a warm welcome. Here’s the boy to manage him,”
said Karsten.
After a while Ingeborg, with a most bewildered face and carrying our
outside things, came to Mrs. Peckell’s to inquire whether we were
there.
When she couldn’t find us in any of the rooms and discovered the
office door wide open she understood that we had gone out. She had
been frightfully worried and had searched for us a long time, and now
she was very angry.
“Who ever saw the like of you children? Such outrageous behavior!”
grumbled Ingeborg, hurrying us home.
* * * * *
We were the ones who got the “warm welcome,” as Karsten calls it,
when Father heard about the ghost. He immediately got a light and we
had to go with him up into the loft. Right near the last flight of
stairs lay the heavy old folding screen on top of a big tin bath-tub.
“Here is your earthquake, Inger Johanne,” said Father. “Don’t you
remember that the tub hung here and the screen stood there? Karsten
must have knocked them both down in his fright.”
“Yes, I did run against something,” said Karsten.
“You were the ghost yourself,” said Father. “And as for the other
remarkable sounds that you tell of, I shall have a man up on the roof
to-morrow to see to the tiles. He’ll put a stop to strange noises,
I’ll warrant.”
Just think of its being only the big screen and the bath-tub that we
had been so awfully frightened by! Karsten was extremely embarrassed.
Mother did not scold us or laugh at us. She said that those who had
died were so happy and so much better off in heaven that they would
not wish to come back here.
[Illustration: “HERE IS YOUR EARTHQUAKE, INGER JOHANNE,” SAID
FATHER.—_Page 222._]
And that is surely true. For, really, when you come to think of it,
what pleasure could it be for an old customs officer to go wandering
about in the dark up in a loft?
XVII
A SNOW FIGHT
I wonder if you ever knew anything to equal the wonderful winter
weather we had that day. It had been snowing until all the mountains
and rocks around our old house had vanished, and instead of them,
there were only beautiful mounds so soft-looking that you wanted
awfully to turn somersaults in them.
The day before, there had been a very slight thaw, but during the
night everything was frozen hard again, and when the sun came out
that morning, thousands and tens of thousands of diamonds were
scattered everywhere, sparkling, glittering, flashing, so that the
brightness hurt your eyes.
On the old trees down the hillside bits of frozen, glistening snow
shone out against the blue sky; the sky was wonderfully blue that
day, I remember.
How a sudden overwhelming gladness can sometimes take possession of
one! Not necessarily because there is anything especial to be happy
over. For that matter, such sudden joy can come simply because it is
fine, bright weather, and can be so exciting that you want to shout
at the top of your lungs, throw out your arms, or turn somersaults,
just because it is so good to be alive!
Exactly that way did I feel the morning I am telling you about. Our
month’s vacation had begun. I stood on the front steps with my hat
and coat on, for I was going to see Massa and Mina, and I was in
such high glee over nothing that I had a great mind to jump up into
the shining air. But I controlled myself, for through the window of
Father’s office I could see Policeman Weiby’s purple nose, and he
would certainly think I was crazy if I behaved that way.
When it is frightfully icy on the hill Policeman Weiby always wears
boots with sharp nails on the soles when he comes up to see Father.
Once inside the house the dumpy old policeman lifts first one foot
and then the other so that the nails won’t go into the floor and
fasten him there. My! I wish that might happen some day!
I buttoned my light brown gloves very nicely,—they go away up over
my wrists,—held my muff straight down, and pushed my chest out and
my stomach in, as the grown-up ladies do when they walk about the
street. Policeman Weiby probably had wit enough to see now that I was
almost grown up.
A long steep slope with trees on both sides leads up to our house.
At the bottom of the hill Karsten was toiling and struggling with a
great big box which he kept turning over and over so as to get it up
the icy hill which was smooth as glass.
The ear-tabs on his fur cap were unfastened and stuck straight out in
the air, and his ears, fiery red, looked like two big handles. With
his thick fur cap and his hard work, he was dripping with sweat; and
on his hands he had big white mittens that were frozen stiff.
“Come and help me,” he called.
I looked at my light brown, tight-fitting gloves.
“No, I thank you,” I said.
“You ought to see what fun it is to coast down on this box; it bumps
and makes such a rattlety-bang noise—it’s awfully jolly.”
I suddenly had a burning desire to try this sport, forgot completely
that the chest should be held out and the stomach in, took good hold
of the box and pulled,—and there it was, up the hill. Then Karsten
sat on the front of the box, I back of him and down the hill we went.
It might well be said that we bumped and thumped along. I felt as if
I were being shaken to pieces, especially where the road turned at
an angle half-way down the hill. Whether that turn caused it or not,
smash went the box and thud! Out I tumbled on one side, Karsten on
the other, while the remains of the box sped down and hit against
Madam Land’s woodshed with a violent whack. My hands had struck the
road with such force that both my light brown gloves had burst right
across the middle of the palm and my left knee had such a horrid pain
in it that I could scarcely get up.
The red-cheeked old woodchopper came out of Madam Land’s woodshed,
hitching up his trousers.
“Did she fall off?” he asked. I did not deign to answer him.
Karsten was furious.
“It was your fault, you are so heavy and clumsy; and now the box is
smashed that we were to use this afternoon in the snow-fight.”
“A fight? With whom?”
“With the boys at Tangen, of course. Why should they have that grand
big coast all to themselves? We boys from the town never go there
with a sled without their coming at us and hitting us; and we have
only this miserable little hill to coast on.”
“Miserable little hill? This?”
“Yes, I call it a miserable little hill to coast down when Madam
Land’s woodshed is right at the foot, blocking the way so that you
have to twist your legs off, almost, to steer around on to the church
green. But we have had a council of war, and this afternoon we shall
thrash those Tangen boys thoroughly and take the hill for our use.”
This sounded frightfully interesting.
“What time are you going to fight?”
“Oh, you needn’t think that we’ll have you girls with us. You may be
mighty sure we won’t.”
Karsten always pretends that he knows everything the bigger boys plan
among themselves. As a matter of fact, they simply order him around
as much as they please, but he will never acknowledge that.
“We were going to have that box to put our balls in,—snowballs, you
know. We were going to make lots of them right after dinner, and then
drag the box full of snowballs through Main Street and up Back Gorge
and there we would be—right behind Tangen in a jiffy.”
I limped up the hill with my bruised knee aching, but I determined
that I would go out to Tangen that afternoon to see the snow-fight,
no matter how painful my knee was.
In the living-room all through the noon-hour I could hear Karsten
in the woodshed, pounding and hammering at the box. Naturally I had
wormed out of him that the fight was to begin at half-past three
precisely.
I said nothing about having hurt my knee, and a little past three
o’clock went down to the town after Massa and Mina. Yes, indeed, they
were crazy to go to the fight, even if the boys didn’t want us; and
we knew a short cut through Terkelsen’s garden, so off we ran.
By this short cut, we reached the top of the Tangen hill in no time.
Oh, but it was a splendid hill! Very steep to begin with, so that it
gave you a great send-off—tremendous speed at the start—then a long,
long even stretch. You sometimes go as far as away out to Landvigen;
but it is only our old blue sled “Seagull” and Nils Trap’s “Racer”
that go that distance. That is because they are the best sleds in
town.
Only very poor people live at Tangen, pilots and fishermen and
laborers. The small houses are scattered about irregularly, one
little hut on a height, and another in a hollow.