Part 2

Jon was in the best of humors as he rowed us from the shore to the steamer. I didn’t know whether it was because he would now be rid of us for this year or the present of money I had given him, that made him so pleasant.

“Good luck to all three on your journey,” called Jon as he shoved his boat from the steamer.

For a while we could see the church tower and the roof of the Parsonage between the trees; then the steamer rounded an island and we saw them no more.

III

THE LOST KEY

Mrs. Polby is the sort of person who stands on her front steps, with arms akimbo, every minute when she isn’t working, and talks with every one who passes by. That is why she knows all that is going on; and she knows, too, every single hen in the town and every single dog and every single person.

One time she blamed me for something which I hadn’t done at all; and from that very time we became good friends!

Now you shall hear about it from beginning to end.

Mrs. Polby has a son named Karl Johan,—a pale, namby-pamby boy who is offended if you only look at him. In this, he is like his mother, who is easily offended, too, but otherwise they are very different. She is a regular roly-poly, with round eyes and round, rosy cheeks, works hard in her vegetable garden, and talks a great deal, as I have told you.

It is rather unfortunate that Karl Johan is so namby-pamby when he has such a kingly name. That’s why we tease him, calling him Karl Johan Gustavus Adolphus Kristian Fredrik Julius Cæsar Polby or other grand names; and he gets so furious that he runs home and tattles to his mother. Then Mrs. Polby stands on her steps and holds a Judgment Day for us, blaming me especially; so you can understand that she and I have never been very good friends.

Back of her house, Mrs. Polby has a big garden where she grows a quantity of cabbages which she sells in the autumn.

In the farthest end of the garden there is an old tumble-down building where she stores the cabbages until they are sold.

Although Mrs. Polby doesn’t know it, we often play hide-and-seek in that building, for there are so many closets and bins and little rooms in it where we can hide. The house is so old and rickety that there are big cracks everywhere in the floor and the walls.

One day Mother said to me, “Run down and buy two heads of cabbage from Mrs. Polby.” Off I ran like the wind, as I always do. Mrs. Polby, for a wonder, was not on her steps, but Karl Johan sat in the kitchen drinking coffee out of a big bowl.

“Well, Karl Johan Victor Emmanuel Clodevig,” said I, “have you any cabbages to sell?”

He began to scold at a great rate, his face in the bowl the whole time, but he didn’t answer my question about cabbages; so I thought it was best to find Mrs. Polby herself, and I ran out to the vegetable field.

The door of the shanty stood open, and one cabbage-head after another came dancing out. She is in there, I thought, and probably not in good humor, for the cabbages were being thrown with a certain wrathful haste. I couldn’t see Mrs. Polby herself, for she was farther inside the house.

True enough, there she was, hard at work in the midst of her cabbages, and very red in the face; she was throwing out the rotten ones, and, as I had thought, was not in a very gentle mood.

“I should like two heads of cabbage, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “But I must tell you that your son has been talking horridly to me.”

“Is that so? Well, who is it he learns such talk from, sauce-box?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said I. “But I should like the cabbages right away.”

No, she hadn’t any cabbages, she said; they all rotted and she was sick and tired of the whole business, and, anyway, she sold no cabbages to persons who called her Karl Johan nicknames.

“Do you call Julius Cæsar, and Gustavus Adolphus and Clodevig nicknames, Mrs. Polby?” I asked.

“Heathen names and dog names we have no use for in this country,” she said, “and you can go your way for you’ll get no cabbages from me. Tell your mother so, with my compliments.”

With that she went into a little closet at the back of the shanty, and slammed the door after her. Probably she slammed it a little harder than she really meant to, (for she was in a temper, you know,) and the lock caught. At the same moment the key tumbled out of the keyhole, and fell down through a crack in the floor, vanishing in the depth below.

“The key fell through a crack, Mrs. Polby,” I called.

Mrs. Polby fumbled at the door, took hold of it and pulled and pushed till the whole house shook.

“Will you unlock this door and do it at once?” she shouted.

“I can’t unlock it. The key fell through a crack and under the floor,” I shouted back.

Just think! she didn’t believe me!

“Don’t tell me such a thing as that. You unlock this door this minute!” she screamed.

Nothing I could say would make her believe that I had not the key. She kept on beating and pounding at the door and berating me for not letting her out.

“Oh, I shall suffocate in here. I certainly shall,—with my asthma!—Oh! Oh!”

It was a very small closet she was in, scarcely bigger than a wardrobe.

“Put your mouth up to that little hole in the door and I’ll run after the locksmith,” I said.

“Oh, no! Don’t go!” shrieked Mrs. Polby. “I don’t dare to stay here alone.”

What in the world should I do? There stood Mrs. Polby with her mouth close to the hole which was about as big as the bunghole in a barrel.

Sometimes her mouth disappeared while she cried, “Oh, my asthma! my asthma!”

“Karl Johan,” I shouted from the door. “Hurry! Come as fast as you can! Your mother is locked in the closet.”

He came dragging himself slowly along as if there were no need of haste.

“Hurry! Hurry!” I shouted anxiously. “She can’t breathe, she says, locked in that little place.”

“Well, let her out then,” said Karl Johan, crossly.

O dear! Like his mother, he thought it was all my doing.

“But I can’t let her out. I can’t! The key is under the floor,” I cried, stamping my foot at him. “But you can get it. You are so thin and small you can creep under the building easily. The key is right below the closet. Do go, Karl Johan.”

“Oh, do, my jewel!” cried his mother from the hole in the door. “Oh, oh, do go!”

But just imagine! He would not go, even when his mother begged him to.

“It’s full of rats under the floor,” said Karl Johan. “I don’t want to go there.”

“Then run for the locksmith,” I said. “Only do hurry.”

Well, Karl Johan went, though he took his own time about it; but I felt so sorry for poor Mrs. Polby, who was wailing piteously, that I couldn’t bear to wait for the locksmith.

“I’ll creep under the house, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “Just keep calm.”

“Oh, will you? God bless you! This is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she moaned.

So I crept under the house. It was all I could do to get along, for the ground was wet and slimy and disgustingly filthy, with old straw, broken bottles, and every kind of trash. And Karl Johan was right—_rats_. Ugh! But I crept and crept. Mrs. Polby stamped on the floor and called all the time so that I should know about where the key would lie.

I fumbled and fumbled in the dark. No, I could not find it. A rat ran right over my hand and I only just managed to keep myself from screaming.

“Can’t you find it?” called Mrs. Polby.

There! my hand touched it! I was so glad that I shouted loudly, “I’ve got it! I’m coming, I’m coming!” as I started to creep out. But you may well believe that it was difficult to turn one’s self around under that floor; it was about the hardest of all.

Ah-h! Now I was out in the air again! My, but it was good! Into the house I bounded, put the key in the lock and flung the door wide open.

Mrs. Polby was sitting on the floor, chalk-white in the face and without power to speak at first. In a moment, though, she threw her arms about my neck with such force that I nearly fell over backward, for she is pretty heavy, I can tell you; then she began to cry.

“I really didn’t throw the key away,” I said.

“Oh, no! The keyhole has been bad this long time—and you have saved my life——Oh! Oh!”

She kept on coughing and crying and at last said I should have five cabbages as a present; and then she cried again.

“Why do you cry now?” I asked. “Here comes Karl Johan with the locksmith.” True enough—they were coming at full speed with a very long pair of tongs.

“So you’ve been sitting under lock and key, have you?” said the locksmith.

“Don’t talk to me, for I haven’t any breath,” said Mrs. Polby; but at the same minute she gave a scolding lecture to Karl Johan because he would not creep under the floor after the key.

Just imagine! I really did get five heads of cabbage as a present—and had my money besides!

So nowadays whenever I see Mrs. Polby standing on her front steps, I stop and we have a little chat; for we are the very best of friends.

IV

TOBIESEN’S GRAND PARLOR

So many strange things are always happening to me. Can you understand why? Some persons (like my aunt who went to Paris) never have anything the least bit interesting happen to them. Why, when she came home, she said (I heard her with my own ears):

“I suppose I ought to have a great deal to tell about my trip, but really nothing especial happened and I haven’t seen or done anything worth telling of.”

“If that’s so,” said Father, “your trip wasn’t worth the money it cost,” and I agreed with him entirely. If I had gone to Paris, I should have had enough to talk about continually for a month or more. At home they say that if I just go out on the front doorstep, look up and down the street, and come right in again, I have immediately a great deal to tell. It may well be, however, that I talk a little bit too much—but when so many exciting things are happening all the time, am I to keep still and not talk about them? No, indeed, I’m not that kind of person. Talk I must.

Now you shall hear how I came to be in Tobiesen’s grand parlor where none of the town folk have ever been; for it was in a curious way, as you will agree.

Tobiesen is an assistant at the Custom House—but he doesn’t look like the other officers. They are all short and stout and red-faced—at least they are in our town. But it is not so long ago that Tobiesen came here, so probably that is why he is so unlike the other officers. He is very tall and cross-looking; won’t talk to people and doesn’t associate with any one. Would you like to know what he does when he sits alone at home in the evenings? He embroiders,—works on canvas! Ingeborg, our maid, says that all men who do needlework are cross; so it isn’t strange that Tobiesen looks so glum and disagreeable, since he sits and sews on canvas every evening. He is not married, and he lives alone, a little way out of town over the new road, in a house that he has bought and made all pretty and bright with new paint. Tobiesen, as I have said, never goes anywhere and nobody ever goes to his house; yet both Mina and I have sat for a whole hour in his best parlor! and that without having any idea of doing it! I was afraid enough that time, I can tell you.

I don’t know whether it is so where you live,—that a great many wandering Gypsy tribes come to the town,—but they certainly come to ours. There are Flintian’s tribe and Griffenfeldt’s tribe and Long Sarah’s tribe, and many others.

Most of them come by land with packs on their backs full of tinware and woven baskets that they wish to sell; and they always have a crowd of dirty dark-skinned children and cross women and cross dogs with them. Some Gypsies, though, come by boat—but I don’t know any of those except Lars and Guro, who belong to Flintian’s tribe. They own a big boat exactly like a pilot-boat and travel from town to town and deal in pottery and rags. They always bring their boat to the wharf near the market-place.

My, but you should see Lars and Guro! Both are dark, lively little persons. There is only this difference between them: Guro wears as little as she can, while Lars has as much as possible on him—he is all stuffed out with clothes and rags.

Guro says that Lars is weak in the head, and that anything weak must be kept warm, so Lars wears a heavy fur cap all summer, no matter how hot the sun is there on the wharf.

Guro attends to the rag business and Lars to the pottery. He has some savings-banks of red clay in the form of a bird with a slit in the back which all the children in town are crazy to buy. Guro with bare brown legs fairly wades in the heaps of rags on the deck, and scolds at the children who stand on the wharf and watch her.

Perhaps you are wondering what Lars and Guro have to do with Tobiesen’s grand parlor. Well, just wait.

The longer Lars and Guro are in town, the crosser they get at all of us children. At first they are quite pleasant and let us go down on the deck where they are and peep into their cabin—my! but it looks disgusting—but later no such favors are to be thought of. Whether this is because Lars and Guro, when their business has brought them in some money, are always drunk, or because all the children are so horrid about teasing them, I don’t know; but the fact is that when the rag-boat has been at the wharf about a week, Lars and Guro are so angry and behave so abominably that a policeman has to stand on the wharf all day to stop Guro when she gets too outrageous. Their visit usually ends with their being told by the police to get away from our town with their boat the quickest they can.

The rag-boat had been at the wharf about four days and Lars and Guro were, even for them, in an unusually bad humor. Guro had promised me and the other children a mighty warm welcome if she once got hold of us. And on top of that she promised that she would surely get us in her clutches before she left the town, for worse children, she said, were not to be found along the whole coast. That long-legged one, the Judge’s girl, (that was I) was the worst of the whole lot. For that matter, said Guro, she didn’t care whether we were the children of priest or prophet or magistrate, she would catch us just the same.

One afternoon Mina and I went for a walk up on the new road. Not a person was in sight. Oh, yes, there was; Lars and Guro were coming down the road towards us. They walked hand in hand, staggering a little, and quarreling loudly as they came. Mina and I did not dare to pass them on that lonely road with no one else near, so we ran up the hill and hid while they passed us.

But when they were just below us, Mina called out, “Raggedy Guro—raggedy Lars!” From that came all the trouble. I was awfully provoked with Mina. Really, she might rather have let them go in peace that time.

But you should have seen and heard the commotion, then!

Guro and Lars dashed back to where they could scramble up the bank. They showed that they could both make good use of their legs, I can tell you. There was no time to be lost, for they had almost caught up with us.

Mina and I ran as we had never run in our lives before, hopped over stones, and ran and ran. Oh, how afraid I was!

Guro was after us swift as the wind; Lars had so many clothes on that he was clumsy and slow in his movements, and was very soon left behind.

For an instant, I thought it might be safest to run farther up the hill, but no, my next thought was that it was best to get to the road again, so I sprang down five or six feet at one leap—Mina after me. Guro dared not take such a leap as that. Luckily for us she had to run a roundabout way, so we had a little the start of her.

Not a sound came from Mina or me, but Guro scolded incessantly. We ran for dear life. Lars and Guro had both reached the road now, and the noise they made as they ran could be heard a long way. Oh! There stood Tobiesen’s house!

“Come, let us run into Tobiesen’s,” I exclaimed, panting. In a twinkling we were through the court and in the hall; we rushed to a door and found ourselves in a fine, well-furnished room with white shades pulled down over the windows. The key was on the inside of the parlor door and I turned it hastily. There we stood. But at that instant Lars and Guro came tramping into the hall; Guro shrieked and scolded and vowed that she would find us, sure as fate. I was horribly afraid, more so than I can describe; Mina sat herself flat on the floor with her eyes bulging with terror.

There were hasty steps in the room above us, and then from the top of the stairs came the thin, high voice that was surely Tobiesen’s, calling, “Now, in heaven’s name, what is all this rumpus?”

“We want to get hold of the girls who came home just now,” shrieked Guro with the voice she uses when she is in her most furious rages on the rag-boat.

“Came home? No one comes home here.” Tobiesen trudged down the stairs in his slippers.

“I don’t know what kind of man you are,” said Guro, “for I’ve never seen your face before; but it’s that young one of yours I want to get hold of—the one who came home here just now with that long-legged girl of the Judge’s.”

“Are you crazy, folk? I have no young one—I am not married.”

“When we find them, we’ll break every bone in their bodies,” Lars’ thick voice growled from under his fur cap and out of his muffled throat.

Mina and I looked at each other. What a frightful position we were in—only a little thin door between us and that furious Guro and Lars and with no one to protect us but Tobiesen, who might be angry with us, too!

Guro screamed louder and louder.

“If you think I am afraid of you, you make a big mistake,” she shouted. “I’m going to find them, be sure of that.” She rushed farther into the hall, and shook one of the doors. Tobiesen spoke again, his voice sounding perfectly desperate.

“See here, you two,—here—take this, but go—only go away.”

Guro’s manner and tone changed at once.

“Thanks and honor—thanks and honor—My, such a wonderful nice man! Now, truly, you can’t tell by the outside of folk how they are inside—such a wonderful nice man!”

Evidently he had given them money to make them go away.

“Now go,” Tobiesen repeated. “Go away at once.”

There! They were out of the door and he turned the key in its lock after them.

“Whew!” Tobiesen gave a long whistle of relief, but if he had known that we were in his grand parlor he’d have whistled louder yet! I had a little hope that he might go up-stairs again; but no, he went into a room just across the hall.

“Oh, Mina! How splendid that they have gone!”

“But I’m almost as afraid of Tobiesen as I am of Lars and Guro,” whispered Mina, looking up at me.

“Sh—just keep still. We must wait a little while.” We listened and listened; not a sound was to be heard in the whole house.

Perhaps we could steal away now; but, scared as we were, I simply had to see Tobiesen’s fancy work.

Everywhere in the room, on the chairs and on the sofa were placed small white covers that must surely have embroidered pieces under them. I went on tiptoe over the floor.

“Why, Mina! Really, his work isn’t so bad! Come and see.” There was an angel’s head worked on canvas in white beads on a sofa-pillow, and a harp among roses on the back of a chair.

But Mina dared not stir from the door.

“Sh-sh! Don’t talk. Come back again, Inger Johanne; he will hear you. Ugh! if he should come——”

I turned the key of the parlor door slowly, slowly round. It was great good luck for us that everything in Tobiesen’s house was so well taken care of, for the lock had just been oiled, and the key didn’t make a sound. We tiptoed out into the hall, in dead silence, only making motions to each other.

We reached the street door, turned that key as carefully as we had the other, opened the door quickly—and we were out!

When we had gone three or four steps from the house I turned and looked back. At the door stood Tobiesen staring after us. Such astonishment as his face showed I never saw on any other face. Mina and I ran down the street as fast as we could.

Well, that’s the way we escaped from Tobiesen as well as from Lars and Guro, but tell me, don’t you think it was a frightful situation for us?

Ever since that time, when I see Tobiesen in the distance, I turn and go into another street, I am so afraid he will recognize me.

In the evening of the same day that Lars and Guro had chased us, they were sent out of town for quarreling in the streets, and since then nothing has been seen of them.

V

THE DANCING-SCHOOL

A dancing-master had come to town and almost all the children were to go to his dancing-school. He was Swedish, his name was Baklind, and he had engaged a room at Madam Pirk’s.

Madam Pirk kept cows and made her living chiefly by selling milk. She sold cream, too; but into that she put potato flour so that it should look thick. She was glad to rent a room, you may be sure.

It was an immense room on the first floor and ran the whole length of the house; its big windows looked out on both the yard and the street. Under this room was the cellar where Madam Pirk kept her cows; that must have been why there was always such a peculiar odor in the room.

The wall-paper on this drawing-room represented a countless multitude of green-clad shepherds who played on golden horns in a crimson sunset glow. Midway down one of the long walls stood a monster of an old-fashioned stove, an enormous bulgy contrivance with a pipe that went straight up through the ceiling. To make a fire in that stove would take half a cord of wood, I do believe!

Fortunately for Madam Pirk and Mr. Baklind, there was no question of heating the room. The month of May had come, there was a south wind, and a constant drip-drip outside from the melting snow in the roof gutters. But probably the room was somewhat cold, for Mr. Baklind always wore his spring coat, I remember. If we children wished a little more warmth, the idea was that we should get it by dancing.

Mr. Baklind was a tall, stout man with long hair falling down over his neck. It never occurred to me then, but now I am pretty sure that he curled his hair with curling-tongs. I remember scarcely anything else about him but his legs, which were very thin. He wore striped stockings and pointed patent-leather shoes, and came every day with these dancing-shoes in his pocket, changing to them right there in the dancing-hall while we stood around looking at him.

Baklind himself was the whole orchestra; he played the violin, tramped out the rhythm, and sang, “Tra-la-la!” or Swedish songs. He was a happy fellow, that Mr. Baklind! I should like to know where he waltzes around now.

There were about thirty children who went to Baklind’s dancing-school. We stood arranged according to height; girls in a long row on one side of the room, boys on the other side. Massa was the tallest girl and I came next. Nils Trap was the tallest boy, and Massa was to have him as her partner.

Angemal Terkelsen fell to my lot, a big, awkward boy who could neither bow nor dance, and would never swing himself round except when he came to a corner of the hall, where he had to turn. At first he danced so poorly, that he had to practise all alone while the rest of us sat and watched him. He was stiff as a poker and looked bored all the time he was in the class.

I was mightily offended with Baklind because I had to have Angemal for my partner, although of course Baklind was not to blame that Angemal and I were of the same height. Still, I remember that at that time I thought it was all his fault. Dance with Angemal I must, two hours every day for six weeks.