Part 6

“Is this Mrs. Simonsen who sells molasses cakes?”

Mrs. Simonsen curtsied.

“Yes, your honor,” she answered, respectfully.

The old wooden steps creaked under the Collector’s heavy tread. Now he was in the shop. I peeped in at the door.

“May I then ask you, my good woman,” continued the Collector, “what you call this?”

He searched in one vest pocket, searched a long time,—searched in the other vest pocket; then oh! wonder of wonders! Between his crooked thumb and big pointer finger, he held high in the air my little china doll!

The instant I saw it, I was awfully, awfully glad, for now I knew that no one had swallowed it, that it wasn’t lying in any one’s stomach causing pain if not death.

“What do you call this?” repeated the Collector, staring in a terrifying way at Mrs. Simonsen from under his bushy eyebrows.

There was utter vacancy in Mrs. Simonsen’s sky-blue eyes as she looked from the doll to the Collector and from the Collector to the doll. He had to ask her three times before she answered.

“That—that is a—a doll,” said Mrs. Simonsen at last, so frightened that she was ready to sink to the floor.

“Yes, perfectly true—a doll. But then may I ask what a doll has to do in my molasses cake? What has it to do there, I ask you?”

“In your molasses cake?” exclaimed Mrs. Simonsen in the utmost astonishment. It seemed, however, as if she were a little braver now that the talk came to molasses cakes. There she felt herself surer.

“Yes, right in the molasses cake,” snapped the Collector. “I sat drinking my coffee and eating my cake, when I suddenly felt something sc-r-runch between my teeth. I came within a hair’s breadth of getting it in my throat and choking to death,—giving up the ghost instanter; and that molasses cake came from you,” concluded the Collector, putting his silver-mounted cane right against Mrs. Simonsen’s breast as if it were a pistol.

“Has the Collector found a doll in his molasses cake?” cried Mrs. Simonsen in dismay.

“Exactly, my much respected Mrs. Simonsen,—a doll in my molasses cake.”

Then there was a great to-do! Schulze was called from the bake-house and in his baker’s cap and apron stood there talking German and insisting that he knew nothing about the doll. The Collector scolded and fumed, and Mrs. Simonsen never got any further than to say, “But, your honor, your esteemed highness——” before the Collector interrupted her:

“Keep still, I say. It is I who will talk.”

Oh, how frightened I was! Several times I was about to spring in and say that the doll was mine and that it was I who had put it in the dough; but I didn’t dare.

“I will just give you notice, my good woman, that hereafter no cakes for me shall be purchased here;” and the Collector struck his cane on the floor many times with great emphasis.

When he said that, I felt so sorry for Mrs. Simonsen and nice kind Heinrich Schulze that before I knew it, I was in the bakery.

“Oh, it was I who did it! It was I who put the doll into the dough,—just for fun,—just for a joke on Schulze. Oh, I have been so sorry about it—uh, hu, hu!” I threw myself down across the counter and lay there, crying and sobbing; but it was a relief to have told at last.

“Well, I must say!” exclaimed the Collector, but his tone and manner had changed. “Is it here we have the sinner? And you did that for fun? for _fun_?”

“Yes, I thought Schulze would find it right away,” I sobbed.

“Whose child are you?” asked the Collector. I told him through all my tears and without raising my head from the counter.

“H’m, h’m.” The Collector cleared his throat. “Well, well. Let it pass, my good Mrs. Simonsen. I shall, after all, continue to buy my molasses cakes here; they are exactly to my taste. And you, child,”—he tapped my head with the silver head of his cane,—“you must find some other kind of fun than putting dolls into molasses cakes for people to choke on.” With that the Collector stamped heavily out of the shop.

Mrs. Simonsen was angry with me and so was Schulze; but I was so glad to have the doll in my hands again, so glad that no one had died from it, and that I had eased my conscience by confessing,—oh, I can’t express how glad I was!

“Please don’t be angry. I did it just for a joke, you know. I will never, never do anything like that again. No, indeed, indeed I will not.”

But what do you think? Somehow, since that time, I don’t feel like going as often as I used to into Mrs. Simonsen’s shop or into the back yard to see Schulze; and I scarcely ever get a bit of molasses-cake dough any more.

I was perfectly disgusted that my splendid joke should have turned out not to be funny at all; but the doll that was baked in a molasses cake and all but swallowed by the Collector of the Port, I still treasure.

XI

MADAM KNOLL’S TORTOISE

Up in the attic of Lindquist, the tailor, lives a comical person, Madam Knoll. She is big and broad and very rheumatic, but she laughs at almost everything, although she can get angry enough, too, as you shall hear.

But my, how Madam Knoll can laugh! She shakes all over and makes scarcely a sound except a couple of hoarse cackles at the last when her breath gives out. It is rather alarming until she catches her breath again and hurries on with her talk just where she left off.

For Madam Knoll can talk, too, I assure you. She says that because she is alone so much, words get all tangled up for her and she forgets how to use speech; but I’ve never noticed this, not yet, at any rate.

“Uf!” says Madam Knoll when I go to see her. “I’ve had no one to speak to all day and I’m perishing for talk; it is good to have you come.”

To tell the truth, I go up there because there is so much to amuse myself with. In the first place, Madam Knoll has a toy shop. Two great wide tables are packed full of all kinds of toys. On the walls hang jumping-jacks and red-cheeked dolls that shine and simper in the sun; and from the ceiling hang small birdcages and brownies and every such thing that can in any way be made to hang from a ceiling. I am allowed to go about and play with anything and everything. I wind up the music-boxes till our ears ring with opera melodies. I wind the tops, too, and get a whole crowd of them spinning on the floor at once. Oh, there is plenty of fun to be had up in Madam Knoll’s attic room, I assure you. And Madam Knoll sits on the little platform beside the window, singing in a quavering voice and sewing on shirts, for she sells them as well as toys.

However, few customers climb the steep stairs up to Madam Knoll’s room. Many days can pass when I am the only customer, and of course, I never buy anything.

Madam Knoll had married a Danish glazier, but the name, Knoll, had always been a thorn in the flesh to her, so, all of her own accord, she began to call herself Madam Hansen, for she thought Hansen an extremely pretty name. On one side of the tailor’s front door there is a green sign with white letters which says:

“SHIRTS MADE AT ANY TIME BY MADAM HANSEN”

and on the other side of the entrance:

“NEWEST TOYS FOR SALE. MADAM HANSEN”

People read the signs, then go in and ask for Madam Knoll.

It is not true that the newest toys are to be bought at her shop, though; for, between you and me, she never buys any new ones.

“I should be pretty stupid if I bought new things before I had sold out the old ones,” says Madam Knoll. But it is stupid of her not to, I think.

Well, besides the toys there is the big tortoise. That was brought home by a sailor many years ago, and has now crept and crawled over Madam Knoll’s floor for at least ten years. It is slow and clumsy about turning around, but it has lively little black eyes. Sometimes when I sit and look at the tortoise I think how dreadful for it just to crawl about in the half-darkness between the chair legs when it had been used to glorious sunshine and soft warm white sand and sea-water thoroughly warmed by the sun, down on the coast of Guinea where it came from.

But Madam Knoll does not like me to say that the tortoise does not enjoy itself with her.

“I should be thankful, if I were a tortoise, to walk about in quietness on a clean, scoured floor, instead of being swallowed by a shark or roasted by the sun,” says Madam Knoll. But I am not sure that the tortoise would have the same opinion as she about its home. However, Madam Knoll takes great pleasure in the tortoise. “Its eyes are so much like my man Knoll’s eyes,” she says.

Lindquist, the tailor, owns the house and lives on the first floor. He has one son, Kalle, an idle good-for-nothing boy who has a great habit of sitting on the stairs leading to Madam Knoll’s room; and on that account, she and Kalle live in continual warfare. She says that he keeps customers away, because he is always sitting on her stairs. Time after time she limps to the hallway and peers down to see whether he is there. She keeps an old broom in the corner just to have something at hand to thump Kalle’s head with if he won’t go off her stairs.

“Now be a good boy, Kalle,” says Madam Knoll, holding the broom behind her, “and go away when I tell you to.”

“No,” says Kalle from the stairs.

“Are you defying me, you impudent lazybones? Go away—and that quickly.” A warning thump with the broom on Kalle’s head. “Do you think it is any help to me to have you sit there?” Thump, thump. “Do you think folk will take the trouble to jam themselves against the wall past you when they want to come up to do some business with an old friend?” A heavy thump on Kalle’s red head.

“No,” says Kalle, not stirring.

“Well, then, I shall knock on the floor for your father.” Since Madam Knoll has had the rheumatism, it hurts her to go up and down stairs, so she calls Lindquist that way. He knows well what it means, darts out to the stairs and hauls Kalle by force into his room. This happens quite often, but really not many more customers come to Madam Knoll when Kalle isn’t sitting on the stairs than when he is.

Madam Knoll has lived in the tailor’s attic for seventeen years. She has thought of giving up her lodging every day in all these years, she says; but there is one thing that keeps her from moving, and that is that nowhere in the whole town could she find such a good warm floor for her own feet and for the tortoise’s, because Lindquist keeps a good fire both summer and winter to heat his irons for pressing.

One day, to my great astonishment, I met Madam Knoll and Policeman Weiby away up in Grand Street. Madam Knoll, you see, almost never goes down-stairs, even. Her face was as red as a boiled lobster and she talked incessantly as she limped along. Policeman Weiby’s under lip stuck out, and he toddled beside her with short mincing steps, for he’s an old man. Naturally, I joined them at once.

“They have stolen my tortoise,” said Madam Knoll. “Oh, that beautiful, poor, dear creature!”

“Who stole it?” I asked.

“Well, if I knew that,” said Madam Knoll angrily, “I shouldn’t have needed to get a policeman. Haven’t I walked with my bad legs all the way over here after Weiby?”

When we arrived at the house Weiby searched the whole attic, poked his cane under the bed and the commode and shook the mat the tortoise usually lay on.

“I’ve done all that myself,” said Madam Knoll angrier than ever.

“Yes, the turtle is gone,” said Weiby.

“Turtle!” said Madam Knoll, so indignant that she could scarcely get the word out.

“We must advertise it,” said Weiby.

“Advertise? Much good that would do!” sniffed Madam Knoll.

“What did you call the police for, Madam Knoll, if you won’t do what he says?” Weiby was angry, too, now.

“Call me Madam Hansen, as my name is,” said Madam Knoll. “However, you may as well go. I can see that you would never find the tortoise if you stumbled over it.” And now she and the policeman were decidedly at loggerheads.

The end was that Weiby stamped down the stairs promising that it would be a long time before he would come there again.

“What is such a man good for?” said Madam Knoll. “Shake the mat and look under the bed as if he had thought of something brand-new, when he might know that I had done all that; he’d never find my tortoise, not if he walked on his head all over town, I could see that by his whole make-up. Oh, the poor lost tortoise! Do you think that whoever has taken it knows that it has four raisins every day,—uh, hu, hu!—and a carrot? Well, I’ll say this,” concluded Madam Knoll, drying her eyes; “if you find the tortoise, you shall have the music-box that plays, ‘Bim bam! Bilibum, bum, bum,’ and my thanks besides.”

Oh-h! Wonder of wonders! That charming music-box for my own!

And so began the time when I hunted for the tortoise. It was really great fun, you know,—exactly as if I were a detective; though people said I would never make a detective, for I was too indiscreet and talked too much.

My! The places I went to, to inquire about that tortoise! Into yards and barns and sheds of all sorts, down in the town, and up on the hill; and I talked with every man, woman and child about the lost tortoise. But no. No one had seen anything a bit like such a creature.

“Well?” Madam Knoll would say questioningly, looking over her spectacles, the minute I opened the door. “Have you found any trace of my dear, beautiful tortoise?”

It began to look as if there were little hope of my getting the music-box that played, “Bim bam! Bilibum, bum, bum.”

Eight days had passed since the tortoise had disappeared. Shame on me, I scarcely thought of it any more; but a person can’t go on thinking of one thing forever.

One day, though, when I went home from school, past the cemetery, I suddenly wanted awfully to play hop-scotch on Peter Bertzen’s gravestone, it is so remarkably flat and broad, just the thing for hop-scotch. While I was hopping there, something moved among the barberry-bushes over by the stone wall. When I went to find out what it was, I saw Kalle Lindquist squatting on the ground, handling something. I crept softly up to him—and just think! It was the tortoise! It had been lying in the stone wall, I could see, for Kalle had taken out some stones from there.

“Kalle, you rascal!” I said, grabbing him by the hair.

“Let me go! Let me go!” screamed Kalle. But I had no idea of doing that until I had got the tortoise from him.

The tortoise was dead; I saw that instantly. The little black eyes usually so lively were half-shut and dim.

“Oh, you cruel Kalle!” I said. “You put the poor thing in the stone wall and let it starve to death. You’d better look out for Madam Knoll. You’ll catch it from her!”

Kalle only laughed and dug in the dirt with a stick.

I took the tortoise in my apron and ran full gallop to Madam Knoll’s. I forgot my schoolbooks altogether and left them in their strap on Peter Bertzen’s gravestone.

“Well?” said Madam Knoll as usual, looking over her spectacles as soon as I appeared at the door.

I was so out of breath that I couldn’t speak; I just showed her what I had in my apron.

Madam Knoll struck her hands together, but when she saw that the tortoise was dead, she began to cry.

“It was Kalle who took it,” said I.

“Kalle!” shouted Madam Knoll. “Give me the broom!” she shouted even louder.

When she got the broom, she pounded on the floor and called “Lindquist!” so that people heard her far up the street. Lindquist came hastily up, his tailor’s sewing-ring on his finger and holding a needle with a long thread trailing from it. He must have thought that the house was on fire, he looked so frightened.

“See here!” said Madam Knoll in a quivering voice. “See here what your bad boy has done.” She laid the tortoise on its back and presented it to him in that manner, so that Lindquist should see at once how dead it was.

“What—what does this mean?” asked Lindquist, bewildered.

“Mean?” cried Madam Knoll. “It means that I shall move from here to-morrow, Lindquist, understand that. It means that your son has killed my tortoise.”

Madam Knoll talked louder and louder as she threatened Lindquist with both the police and the Parliament. Lindquist was utterly unable to make himself heard when he tried to speak, for Madam Knoll entirely out-talked him. My, but there was a hullabaloo in her attic that day!

But Madam Knoll did not move from his house as she had threatened to, after all, for she lives there even now.

Although the tortoise was dead when I found it, I got the music-box, nevertheless. It stands beside my bed. In the mornings everything has to go in such a tearing hurry that I have no time to think of music-boxes; but every night when I undress, I wind it up and then fall asleep while it plays, oh, so delicately and prettily, “Bim, bam! Bilibum, bum, bum!”

XII

PLAY ACTING

Oh, I am so angry with Otto, the woodcutter! for it was all his fault. Just because he was cross over Father’s having bought so much green wood, he had to——Well, I’m going to tell you all about it.

A better theater than our woodshed is not to be found in the whole town. Emil Rasmussen’s hall, where all the traveling actors play, can’t come up to our woodshed, that is certain. Of course I mean in the summer when there isn’t any wood there.

The little platform over in the corner, where the heavy old baby-carriage stands and old boxes and all the other rubbish, is the most magnificent stage any one could wish; and the long, narrow woodshed is a fine place for the spectators. There is also a dressing-room for the actors in the old carriage-house. True, you have to creep through a hole rather high up in the wall to get in there from the woodshed, but that is a small matter. What is worse is that a box of red ochre stands right under the hole and there’s always danger of falling into it. Except for that the carriage-house is a capital dressing-room.

There are no windows in the woodshed. When we shut the door, the only light is what comes through cracks and holes and sifts down between the tiles in the roof; but there are so many cracks and openings that there is more than enough light, anyway.

All the year round, Otto, the woodcutter, stands in the woodshed with sawdust in his hair and chops and saws with his rough purplish hands.

I often sit on a chopping-block near him and tell him fairy tales that I invent myself. Little reward do I get for my trouble, for Otto says never a word about my stories, though I make them as exciting as ever I can.

Well, once we girls decided that we would act a play.

“Warburg’s Company” had just been in town and played “Cousin Lottie” and “Adventures on a Walking Tour.” We had had free tickets every evening and I had sat in the front row and been in the seventh heaven of ecstasy.

Oh, you should have seen Warburg! Such eyes! Such a beautiful nose! And he spoke so charmingly! All the girls in our class went to the wharf to see him off when he left town, and Karen Jensen cried because she would not see him any more. She will not own up now that she cried, but I distinctly saw tears shining in her eyes.

It was when we went home from the wharf that time, that we decided we would act a play. There were Massa, Mina, Karen, Lolla, and I. We should need Karsten, but not any of the other boys,—they are all so disgusting nowadays. They whistle through keys and laugh and whisper when we go past them, and I call such behavior disgusting.

But we must have Karsten, because he sings so charmingly. His voice is so clear, so clear! When he sings:

“_Ja, vi elsker dette landet_,”[4]

it always makes the shivers go down my back; and old Miss Weyergang says that is a sign of the “highest artistic enjoyment” any one can have. Miss Weyergang was in Berlin once and heard “Lucca” sing, and she felt as if one pail of cold water after another were emptied over her; and nothing could have been more delightful, Miss Weyergang says.

So we must have Karsten. I can’t sing a bit. When I try to take a high note, there comes out the queerest sound. It is like the noise Karsten makes when I have shut him in the big empty meal-chest, and he screeches so frightfully from inside there.

But if you imagine Karsten is willing to help us with our performance, you make a great mistake.

“Do you think I will come and play with you girls? Be the only boy? No, thank you. Perhaps you can get such a girl-boy as Peter, the dean’s son, to do that, but not me. Very likely you’d dress me up as you used to when I was little. Humph! No, indeed. I’m a chap who has outgrown all that sort of thing.”

Well, this was going to cost us dear. To try to force Karsten would be of no use. We must coax him.

“If you will be in our theatricals, Karsten, I’ll rip off the two big buttons from the back of my winter coat and give them to you; crocheted buttons, you know.”

“We-ell, you’ll have to give me the two that are on the front of the coat, too.”

“Yes, yes; but then you must sing four times,—once for each button.”

Karsten grumbled a little at this, but Massa promised him a cornucopia full of plums from their shop, and so he gave in.

At school the next day, off in a corner of the class-room, we wrote the program. All the other girls crowded about us, wishing to know what the secret was. Massa and I stood in front and pushed them away, while behind us Mina and Karen wrote as fast as they could on the program. Such an excitement!

The principal came to the door, displeased at the noise; and Anna Brynildsen went and tattled, saying that I had pulled Kima Pirk’s hair. Well, it was true that I had clutched Kima by that red-brown hair of hers, but it was purely in self-defense, for Kima is much stronger than I.

At last the program was all written out. Here it is:

FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE GIOJA COMPANY

IN THE JUDGE’S WOODSHED

_Saturday, the 12th_

1. _Ja, vi elsker_ Sung by Young Gioja (That was Karsten.)

2. Declamation Miss Ella Gioja (That was I.)

3. The Play, “Cousin Lottie.” Freely rendered from memory. By the whole Gioja Company.

4. “The Wild Duck Swims in Silence,” Young Gioja

5. Perhaps two extra numbers.

Entrance fee: What you please, but not less than one _öre_ for each person.

It was certainly a magnificent program and a great deal for the money. In the next recess we put the program up on the wall so that every one could see it. They all said they would come.

Right after dinner on Saturday Mina and I cleared up the woodshed. You may well believe we worked hard. Chopping-blocks, boards, shavings, axes, and saws,—away into the corners with them all. We swept and swept and arranged and rearranged; but we made it look awfully nice, you may depend upon that.

We wouldn’t try to have scenery or “wings.” To fix up such theater contrivances is tremendously troublesome. No, we could creep in and out of the hole in the wall; that was much more convenient.

When it came to the point, Karsten was determined that he would not dress in costume, and of course he must, or it wouldn’t be like a real theater.

More coaxing of Karsten, a promise of another button from my winter coat, and a very rare Rio Janeiro stamp,—and at last he yielded. We took off his jacket, put a red scarf over one shoulder, slanting down to his waist, and set an old peaked felt hat on his head. His face was awfully red and angry,—he hated the whole thing, you see,—but he couldn’t resist that rare Rio Janeiro stamp.

Now the spectators began to come. We peeped through the hole to see them, and my goodness! how quickly the woodshed was filled! Pshaw! There were the boys, Nils and Anton and Ezekiel and all. Ugh! Massa stood at the door and took the money and I saw her shove some boys out who were trying to get in without paying.

It was five o’clock, the time for the performance to begin.