big and little, and the air rang with their shouting and laughter
and jollity. Not many of the children had real sleds; they coasted
mostly on a long board, six or eight of them on it at a time. What
of that? Hey hurrah! how they went! Some stood on skiis, the kind
they make themselves out of barrel-hoops. They whizzed down the hill,
bow-legged, bent way over, but they kept on their feet, anyway.
One child had a forlorn sled with a broken runner; and far below on
the slope a wee little boy with a kerchief tied round his head, was
dragging a stick of wood after him by a string. That was his sled.
None of our boys were to be seen yet. Our appearance on the hill
caused great astonishment. Those who were coming up stood still,
whispered together and went a little to one side. At that moment a
big sailor boy came up—a regular broad-shouldered square-built fellow.
“Come, now!” he shouted to us. “What are you staying around here for?
We have a right to coast down our own hill even if some elegant city
flies stand and look at us.” His voice was changing, and he talked as
loud as if he were in the worst kind of a storm at sea.
At that moment Nils Trap’s crooked nose appeared from behind the
slope, and there were the boys, Angemal Terkelsen, Jens Stub, Peter,
the dean’s son, Axel Wasserfall, and a whole bunch of boys besides.
I saw Karsten bringing up the rear with the box heaping full of
snowballs. Ugh! I almost had palpitation of the heart at the thought
of what was coming but I couldn’t bear to leave.
“What do you want?” asked the young sailor.
“We want this slope to coast on,” said Axel Wasserfall. “You must
pack yourselves off, every one of you, or——”
The young sailor had come close up to Axel, turning sideways and
holding his arms out as boys do when they wish to pick a quarrel with
any one, and staring the whole time straight into Axel’s eyes.
“Pack yourselves off, did you say? Pack yourselves off? I’ll give you
‘pack yourselves’—mass of herring-bones that you are!”
And before Axel could catch his breath, the young sailor’s fist
struck him in the chest, and he was lying in the snowdrift with
the sailor over him; but at the same instant Nils Trap and Angemal
Terkelsen jumped on the sailor’s back. Then there was such a tussle
that the snow flew in all directions.
A crowd of Tangen boys came storming up the hill, but now Karsten and
the rear-guard pressed forward with the snowballs.
Massa, Mina, and I were thoroughly scared and went off to one side.
The air was filled with the fast-flying icy snowballs, which hurt
wherever they hit, as I myself can bear witness, for one hit me on
the cheek and I had to hold my handkerchief there the whole time, it
hurt me so much.
My, but it was exciting! They shouted and they screamed; they did not
keep to the coast any longer, but struggled and fought out in the
deep snow beside the road while fast as ever, without a pause, came
the snowballs from the rear-guard whistling past one’s ears.
The women from the houses around flocked out on their stone steps
with babies in their arms and kept calling out something to which no
one listened.
Our boys had naturally the better position the whole time, for they
stood on the hilltop and threw their snowballs down, while the Tangen
boys stood below and had to throw theirs up. It was not many minutes
before the Tangen boys had to take to their heels and run for shelter
among the houses.
One and another lonely snowball still came whizzing up in a long
curve, but it was easy to see that the Tangen boys felt themselves
beaten.
Axel and Ludvig on our old broad “Seagull” coasted down first; and
after them the others in a long row. My! how they laughed and shouted.
Angemal Terkelsen threw himself on his stomach on a sled—he always
wants to be so bold—and Jens Stub sat astride his back.
Peter, the dean’s son, started off with his flat red sled. It was
made in the country and goes so slowly that the other boys call it
the “Snail.” Then Peter gets offended, for he is the kind of boy who
never gets angry, but only offended.
But in the midst of all the fun and hurrahing, I began to hear
a pitiful sound of crying. When I looked about, I found it came
from the little boy with the kerchief on his head, the child I had
noticed dragging a stick of wood by a string. It was Tollef, our
washerwoman’s little boy.
A snowball had hit him in the eye, he had lost his stick of wood, and
he was crying and crying. He knocked on the door of a little house,
but his mother had gone out and the door was locked.
In the house next to the one outside of which Tollef stood crying,
lived a man whom the whole town called Jack-of-all-trades, because he
fixed lamps, soldered old teakettles, and mended all sorts of things.
He was a little, grimy man and was now standing out on his front
steps.
“Will you take away even this little bit of pleasure from the poor
folks’ children?” asked Jack-of-all-trades. He looked at our boys
laughing and shouting as they coasted down the long hill. His black
eyes flashed and I came pretty near being afraid of him as I stood
there. And all at once it struck me what a shame it was and what a
horrid, mean thing we had done when we drove those poverty-stricken
children from that hill of theirs. I rushed to the snowball box,
tipped it over and trampled what snowballs there were left into the
snow with all my might.
I remember that I began to cry when I got home; I told Mother that
my knee pained me from the knock it got when I coasted on the box,
and that was true; but really my crying was more because of what
Jack-of-all-trades had said, and because we had spoiled the fun of
poor little bow-legged Tollef.
However, the Tangen boys got their hill back again before long, you
may be sure of that! And I’m glad to say that our boys have let them
alone ever since.
XVIII
A CHRISTMAS VISIT
A few days before Christmas, whether because Mother was sick or for
some other reason, it was decided that Karsten and I should be sent
to the Parsonage for a short visit. Peter Olsen, from Uncle’s parish,
was just then in town, so a message was sent to him, asking if he
would take us with him in his sleigh. All waters were frozen, even
the fjord, so we could drive the whole distance.
Indeed, Peter Olsen had not the least objection to taking us, and
late in the evening two days before Christmas the sleigh and two big
horses stood before our door. I always like to sit where I can see
the horses, so I sat in front with the driver and Karsten sat behind
with Peter Olsen.
Karsten was so stuffed out with wraps that people in town, as I heard
later, thought that he was Peter’s wife. For a long time afterward,
when I wished to tease Karsten, I would call him Mrs. Peter Olsen,
for that made him furious.
We drove along in the moonlight over hills and frozen ponds, and
through groves where the branches hung so low that they hit our heads
and sent an avalanche of soft wet snow down our necks.
On Sandy-point fjord, the moonlight shed its silver radiance over
the ice; and the ice gave forth a hollow roaring sound under the big
sleigh and the heavy feet of the horses. Peter Olsen was known as a
regular dare-devil on the ice but perhaps even he felt that the fjord
was not wholly to be trusted that night, for all at once he stood up
to his full height in the sleigh, struck out with his arms and called
loudly to the horses in both German and French.
“_Allons!_” shouted Peter with all the power of his lungs. His red,
curly beard showed clearly in the moonlight. Sharp particles of
frozen snow whizzed about our ears; and bits of ice and lumps of
snow were thrown upon us as the horses dashed swiftly along. Now we
were nearing the shore. Peter called to the driver that he must throw
himself out of the sleigh to lighten it; he himself, still standing
upright, seized the reins in his powerful hands. The ice groaned and
creaked. Peter kept on shouting to the horses. There! At last they
had firm ground under their feet. The driver came trudging along, and
Peter Olsen turned to look back at the breaking ice.
“Well! We managed that fine!” said he, chuckling and laughing.
Farther up the slope, we overtook a little schoolmaster who was
allowed to stand on the runners at the back of the sleigh. The road
was only a wood-road and very rough with naked tree-roots, stones and
lumps of ice.
“This isn’t as flat as a pancake, is it?” remarked the little
schoolmaster.
Far off in the forest some beast gave an ugly howl. Peter said it
was a wolf, but I was not the least bit scared. It was impossible to
be afraid, when you were with Peter Olsen, so stout and strong and
trustworthy.
At a sharp turn in the road, the little schoolmaster fell off his
perch on the runners of the sleigh and lay flat in the road.
“Now we have discharged the teacher,” said Peter Olsen. We had to
wait quite a while in the darkness under the trees before he caught
up with us.
Nothing a bit interesting happened during the rest of the long ride,
and at half-past twelve we drew up at the Parsonage.
I had rejoiced at the prospect of going to the Parsonage at Christmas
time, but now that I was there, it wasn’t just as I had expected it
to be.
It looked so altogether different in winter from what it did in
summer,—so old and gray, almost hidden in snow, and as if crouching
under the hill. In the second story where the rooms were not used in
winter, all the windows were entirely covered with white frost. The
courtyard was one expanse of ice, with narrow black paths, where
ashes had been strewn, leading from one building to another. The
maids stepped cautiously along these ash paths, but even so, one or
another maid would suddenly sit down with a resounding thwack.
Great-Aunt was at the door and seemed glad enough to see us. She was
pretty good to us children, though she never liked any of our fun or
play, no matter what it was. Karsten was her especial favorite. He
amused her mightily because he exaggerated so much. She would listen
with a most serious face to Karsten’s yarns.
“We have a cat at home,” Karsten told her, “that is the wickedest cat
in the whole town. No other cat dares come into our yard, for our cat
either bites its head off or kills it at once.”
“That must be a bad cat,” said Great-Aunt.
“Yes, and it is so big, too. Why, really, if you see it a little way
off, you would think it was a calf; yes, some have thought it was a
cow.”
“Ugh! That must be a horrid town to live in, with such cats around,”
said Great-Aunt. “But I suppose there are some big, strong men there,
too.”
“Oh, yes! You may be sure of that. One man at home is so strong that
he carried a barrel of wheat, full of water besides, up a hill that
was as steep as the wall of this room.”
That is the way Karsten would go on, and Great-Aunt was tremendously
amused by it.
But now I must tell you how things went during Christmas tide.
The whole place was in perfect order, freshly cleaned from cellar
to attic, shining and beautiful. When we came down-stairs in the
morning, the regular Christmas Eve dinner was already under way. I
sat on the kitchen bench and ate various Christmas goodies.
Later, I went to the barn and stable and to see the pigs and the
poultry.
When evening came, it wasn’t as cosy and delightful as Christmas Eve
at home always is, but it wasn’t so bad, after all. Karsten never
behaves himself anything extra when he is away from home, and he
didn’t this time. First, he slept while Uncle preached, and nodded so
that he nearly fell off his chair several times. Then he was sick in
the night because he had eaten too much, as he has done every single
Christmas as far back as I can remember.
Uncle gave me a gold-piece,—an English sovereign. Aunt Magda gave me
a religious book in red binding and with gilt edges that will look
very bright and handsome in my bookcase; and Great-Aunt gave me a
charming little brooch of silver filigree.
It was really a pleasant Christmas Eve, after all; but when I had
gone to bed, I lay awake and thought of Mother, and at last I
couldn’t help crying. I smothered my crying in the blankets, however,
so that Karsten should not hear, for if he heard me crying, he would
begin; and he roars so when he cries that he would have aroused the
whole house.
Well, what do you think? On Christmas morning it rained! Yes, a
fine drizzling rain with fog out over the sea and up on the hill.
When the church bells rang, they sounded like big muffled cow-bells
through the fog. From the shore came the church folk, walking slowly
in large groups. They did not go into the church but stood out in the
drizzling rain, by the door or by the stone wall of the churchyard,
waiting for the minister to go in first.
Uncle in his cassock was walking up and down the living-room floor
talking with the deacon. The deacon was a big, fat man in a frock
coat that was too narrow for him and pinched at the armholes.
Everything about Deacon Vebjornsen was unusually large—except his
frock coat. His mouth was big, his smile was big and his neck was
very, very big.
“Well, well!” said Uncle.
“Well, well! Well, well!” said the deacon.
The church in another part of the parish was being repaired, so the
people from there came to the service in Uncle’s church in Sandvaag.
Their deacon came, too, and Deacon Vebjornsen and he tried to see
which could sing loudest. Neither would give up. Never in my life
have I seen or heard any one sing as the two deacons did that
Christmas day in Sandvaag church. They stood erect in the pew, both
with their mouths stretched wide open. I expected every minute that
they would burst something inside of them.
Above the piercing sounds the two deacons made, came Uncle’s dear
voice from the pulpit, sweet and mellow and kind.
It made me think of Mother, and I had to try with all my might to
keep from crying. I couldn’t bear that any one should see me crying
in church.
Uncle invited ever so many to go to the Parsonage to dinner; —two
sailors with their wives, three school-teachers and a widow with
three children. Great-Aunt stood out in the kitchen, crimson in the
face, and awfully provoked at Uncle.
“Did you ever see such a man?” she burst out. “He goes and invites
eleven strangers to dinner without my having any idea of it; and
the roast will be too small. The three teachers are equal to eating
up all the princess pudding, just themselves alone, and—oh, I wish I
were thirty feet under ground!—But I could have told you beforehand
that this would happen. I could have told you!”
Aunt Magda had to go out to comfort her, and it took much coaxing to
get Great-Aunt to go to the dinner-table.
“There are people enough there already,” she said.
When she was at the table she kept urging and insisting that the
three teachers should eat more and more of the French beans for she
knew there were plenty of them.
I should like to tell you that we had a pleasant time after dinner
that Christmas Day; but to tell the plain truth, I was perfectly
bored.
The ladies sat in the big parlor, drank coffee and talked old-granny
fashion about every possible kind of sickness; so I knew it would be
much pleasanter in the sitting-room with Uncle and the sailors and
the three teachers. I had just sat down in there to listen to them
when Aunt Magda came and asked me to go and amuse the strange little
boys.
Karsten and the oldest boy were out on the front steps.
“Have you good muscle in your arms?” asked Karsten.
“No, I don’t think so,” answered the strange boy.
“Look here,—here you can see”—Karsten stretched out his arm. “That’s
the way an arm should be, the muscle standing up in a curve; feel of
this and you’ll know what muscle is.”
The boy felt of Karsten’s arm.
“You feel of it, too,” said Karsten to the two smaller boys. “Exactly
like lignum vitæ, and lignum vitæ is the hardest thing in the world.”
All the boys admired Karsten’s muscle tremendously, that was easy to
see.
It still rained steadily, so I suggested that we go into the inner
hall. Oh, that dear old Parsonage hall, where there was always a
smell of old cheese and such things. Yes, the front hall smelled of
rose-leaves, but the inner hall of old cheese. In the front hall, we
bowed and curtsied nicely and were well-behaved; but in the other
hall we played and romped and had great fun.
For the moment, I couldn’t think of anything to do there but slide
down the banisters. You know what jolly fun that is, sliding so
frightfully fast, especially where the banister curves. I went ahead
up the stairs, the four boys after me, away up to the attic, then
whizz! down the banisters! The whole troop tramped up the stairs
again, whizz! down again. My! this was getting to be great fun—there
stood Great-Aunt at the door.
“Are you crazy, you children? Will you tear the house down over our
heads? Out with you! Out, I say.”
So there we were. What should we do now?
“Let’s put up a swing in the woodshed,” I suggested.
The others agreed instantly. Karsten ran to the harness-room to get a
rope. I climbed up one side of the woodshed and Karsten the other; we
tied and knotted the rope around a beam and made a perfectly splendid
swing. When we swung very high, we went through the doorway right out
into the air. To be so awfully high up gave me a tickle-y feeling in
my stomach, but I liked it.
We took turns. The littlest boy was afraid. He clung tight to the
rope and screamed!
“Fie for shame! A boy that doesn’t dare to swing!” I said. So he got
into the swing and we pushed him; but suddenly, when he was at the
very highest, he let go and fell whack! on the woodshed floor.
I was terribly scared, for it was really my fault that he had got
into the swing. He sobbed and cried, poor little thing, and had a big
blue bump on his forehead. I picked up a lump of ice and held it to
the bump. The other children kept on swinging as high as they could.
Just then Great-Aunt appeared, with a purple handkerchief over her
head.
“There! Didn’t I know there was something crazy going on again? It
would be a fine thing if you made all the wood here tumble down
on you, wouldn’t it? And he has fallen and hurt himself. Well, it
is a wonder to me that you are all alive as yet. Take that down,”
concluded Great-Aunt in her crossest tone. “Take that swing down this
moment, Inger Johanne.” Great-Aunt turned to me. “For it is certainly
you who are responsible for this whole business.” Karsten and I had
to climb and untie the rope.
“And now come with me into the big parlor, every one of you,” said
Great-Aunt. “I can’t be easy a minute unless I have you sitting right
under my eyes.”
Well! There we had to sit, five of us in a row, as stiff as posts the
whole long afternoon. Ugh! how angry I was at Great-Aunt.
The next day there was service in the church again, and the two
deacons tried as hard as ever to out-sing each other; but Uncle
did not invite any one home to dinner. I suppose he didn’t wish to
displease Great-Aunt again.
“There now! To-day he might have invited half the town,” said
Great-Aunt, “for to-day I have plenty of food.”
It rained and it rained. What in the world should Karsten and I
do? Slide down the banisters we mustn’t, swing in the woodshed we
mustn’t; but to lay a board across the chopping block and play
seesaw, surely there could be no harm in that.
We found a board and seesawed up and down, up and down, until Nella,
the parlor maid, came out with the message that we were to stop. We
might pinch our fingers, Great-Aunt thought!
“Well, let’s go and jump in the hay in the barn,” suggested Karsten.
“That’s awfully good fun.”
I had just got Karsten in the hay under me and heaped so much hay
on top of him that he could scarcely breathe, when we heard Aunt
Magda’s sweet, gentle voice from the barn door.
“Oh, you dear, dear children! Don’t do that! Great-Aunt says that you
might lose a pin in the hay that a cow would eat, and the pin might
stick in her insides. Come, dears, be good children and don’t play in
the hay any more.”
“Oh, no, Aunt Magda! Don’t say that. Just come and see what fun it
is. I haven’t a single pin about me, Aunt Magda.”
“Well, but you might lose a button, Great-Aunt says, and a cow
might get it in her throat and choke on it; so come now, like good
children.”
Of course there was nothing else to do. Out of the hay must we come.
Karsten was perfectly desperate with boredom.
“I’m going home,” he said. “I won’t stay here any longer, and I’m
never, never in the world coming here again. They can eat their good
food themselves for all of me.”
I wouldn’t tell Karsten so, but I felt just as he did; and every
night when I had gone to bed, I had a dreadful longing for home. I
felt as if something heavy lay on my heart and clutched it. Why are
they so afraid and won’t let us do anything? How queer old people
are! When I am old I am not going to be like Great-Aunt, I’m sure of
that.
We had been at the Parsonage four days and still had to stay over
Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I didn’t believe I should ever see Father and Mother again. And
people said it was so pleasant to go visiting! No, it wasn’t; it was
horrid, it was very, very sad. I thought that if I ever got home
again,—_if_ I ever did,—I’d never, never go away from Father and
Mother any more.
* * * * *
When I awoke next morning and saw Nella at my bedside with a tray of
coffee and little cakes, I found myself, strangely enough, in much
better spirits. It was rather pleasant, after all, to go visiting.
“What kind of weather is it, Nella?”
“Delightful and warm,” said Nella.
Karsten and I would rather have had good ice for skating and hard
snow for coasting, so we couldn’t agree with Nella that the weather
was delightful when the wind was warm and the roofs dripping.
However, we were in brilliant good humor that morning, Karsten and I.
If I had imagined then what the day would bring——
Great-Aunt had not forbidden us to go into the sheep-barn, and so we
were there early and late. How cosy and snug it is in a sheep-barn
and what a good smell there is of sheep’s wool and dry leaves and hay!
Almost all the sheep were afraid of us, and they crowded themselves
together and pushed and squeezed each other away off to a corner,
looking at us with innocent eyes. There was just one sheep that was
not afraid of people and liked to be petted. It squeezed itself up
against me and lay close beside me when I sat down. My! How I did
love that sheep!
Before we went down there that morning, Karsten suggested that we get
some boiled potatoes from those that had been cooked for breakfast
and take them to the sheep. I thought this was an excellent idea.
It happened that there was no one in the kitchen when I went in; I
supplied myself with a heaping plateful of big potatoes and went my
way.
When the sheep had once tasted the potatoes, I thought they had gone
crazy. They jumped over each other, pushed and jammed and pressed
themselves forward, trying to get at the plate. I held it high above
my head. Oh-h! All the potatoes tumbled off and rolled among the
sheep. They butted each other, scrambled for the potatoes, snatched
and ate in haste.
“Oh, see that sheep of yours!” said Karsten suddenly. “How queerly it
behaves! Did you ever see anything like it?”
I looked. Yes, I had to agree with him, that the sheep he pointed
to, my dear pet sheep, was behaving in a most peculiar manner. It
went backward round and round a couple of times with wide-open mouth;
suddenly it fell on its side, kicked a little, stretched its legs out
to their full length and then lay perfectly still.
[Illustration: OH-H! ALL THE POTATOES TUMBLED OFF AND ROLLED AMONG
THE SHEEP.—_Page 256._]
Oh, how frightened I was!
“What is it, Karsten? What is the matter with it? Help me to get it
up. Oh, my sweet, dear sheep! Go after the milkmaid, Karsten,” I said.
He was gone an eternity it seemed to me, but at last came back with
the milkmaid.
“What have you done, child?” she asked in terror. “The sheep is dead.
You’ll catch it from old Miss.” (She meant Great-Aunt.) “You gave it
a whole potato and that stuck in its throat, you see, and choked it
so it couldn’t breathe. O me! O me! What a misfortune!”
I ran out of the sheep-barn; Karsten was right at my heels and we
rushed into the kitchen where Great-Aunt stood at the stove cooking
something.
“Oh, Great-Aunt! I have killed a sheep with a potato!”
If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget how Great-Aunt looked
as she turned towards me.
“There! Didn’t I know it would be so?” Words came at last.
“Trouble-maker that you are! Why in the world did you come here?
Children should stay at home, I think——”
I heard no more, for I ran out—ran I did not know where, but at
last I found myself sitting in a dark corner of the barn behind the
hay-cutter.