Part 7

I rang a little cow-bell and Karsten crept through the hole in the wall in full costume. I followed him with an accordion for I was to play an accompaniment, you see. I can’t play the accordion very well but I hoped I might get along all right, nevertheless.

“_Ja, vi elsker_,” began Karsten, and I accompanied him as well as I could but he sang faster than I played, so I kept several notes behind him.

“You’re playing wrong,” said Karsten, stopping short in the song.

“I’m not, either. We’ll soon get together. You just keep on singing.”

We went at it again.

“If you can’t play properly I won’t sing any more,” said Karsten after a few more notes.

“Oh, you horrid thing! Keep on singing. I’ll catch up.”

But Karsten sprang at me and thumped me over the head two or three times. I grabbed him by both ears but he wrenched himself away. There was a roar of laughter throughout the whole woodshed, and the boys shouted, “Bravo! Bravo!”

O pshaw!

Karsten had already clambered back through the hole. I saw only his legs when I turned around. Under the circumstances, there was nothing for me to do but to creep after him.

In the woodshed, the spectators whistled through their fingers, shouted and screeched. After draping a black shawl over my head I again made my entrée in as dignified a manner as was possible through the hole.

Until the very moment I stepped forward on the stage, I was in the most horrible uncertainty as to what I should recite. It was impossible for me to decide whether it should be “_Terje Vigen_,” or “The Church Clock in Farum,” or “Little squirrel sat,” or what. The room was now still as death.

“Ahem! h’m!” I kept clearing my throat.

O dear me! Which poem _should_ I choose?

But of all things in the world! There, at the woodshed door, stood Otto, the woodcutter, looking frightfully cross.

“What’s all this?” he called in a rough, angry voice.

I saw danger ahead, and spoke from the stage as mildly and soothingly as I could.

“This is a theater, Otto. We’re acting—having awfully good fun.” Almost before I had finished speaking, the spectators shouted in chorus:

“Theater, Otto! Theater!” and rushed at him, snatching at his jacket from behind, while Nils set up a blood-curdling Indian howl, such as only he can give; and everything was in a hullabaloo in no time.

Suddenly I saw Otto stride over to a heap of wood in the corner and grab a stick.

“Such trash! Such foolishness!” he shouted, swinging the stick in the air. “There must be a stop put to this, I tell you! Such goings on in a regular woodshed! Out with you!” He was like a furious savage.

“Look out! He harms people when he is so angry,” shouted Karsten from the hole.

All the spectators ran for the door, tumbling and scrambling over each other. I retired as hastily as possible through the hole, and darted out of the carriage-house door; and up the hill sprang spectators and actors in a wild rush.

All the rest of the day Otto went rummaging and ransacking around in the woodshed and scolding over wicked children, the foolishness of the world, and the misery of having green wood to cut up.

He was in a bad humor over the affair the whole summer, and will surely never forget it.

The next day at school, all the spectators came to us and wanted their money back. I thought that was mean, but, anyway, they didn’t get it; for of course we had immediately spent it on lemon-drops.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] National Song of Norway. (“Yes, we love this land.”)

XIII

A DAY AT SCHOOL

Sometimes it is rather pleasant to go to school; a little tedious, oh yes, but often jolly good fun.

What makes it horrid is that one has to go to school in all kinds of weather. When there is sunshine and such fresh, crisp, clear air that it tingles through your whole body even to your finger-tips, and you have to go to school and sit there three, four, five hours, then I really think it is disgusting. Yes, I allow myself to say that then it truly is disgusting.

But when there is a drizzling rain and I know my lessons, it is not so bad to go to school, after all. I almost always know my lessons, for that matter. When I study them twice over and then shut my eyes and hear myself, I know them. When there is something very difficult in our “History of the World,” such as the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly, the Representative Assembly, and all that, why, then I have to study the lesson over three times.

I am at the head of the class, and always have been, as far back as I can remember. So the other girls plague me to translate for them till I am often bored. I scarcely get inside the class-room door in the mornings before they rush at me, each with her book in her hand, and draw me to a window or a corner to translate the German lesson or the English lesson for them.

There is only one girl that I am afraid might get above me in the class and take my place away from me. That is Anna Brynildsen. From the moment she came into the school, and being a new pupil was put at the foot of the class, I have been afraid of her, because people said she was frightfully clever. She has already crept up so that her seat is the second from the head.

There is something awfully exasperating to me about Anna Brynildsen. I don’t like her looks, I don’t like her clothes or anything. Antoinette Wium says I’d like her better if she weren’t so clever. Well, I _don’t_ like the glib way she recites, as if everything were as easy as A B C; and that self-satisfied look she wears is enough to exasperate any one, I think. She almost never talks but when she does say anything, every word is so sensible that she might as well be eighty years old.

Ugh! that Anna Brynildsen!

Now I will tell you how a day at school goes with us. One only time in all my life have I cheated at school, and it is that particular day I am going to tell about.

I must begin at the beginning, and that is old Ingeborg who cleans the schoolroom, wipes up the dust, puts wood in the stove, and so on. But old Ingeborg is so old that she can’t see the dust, and when we come to school it is lying thick everywhere. That is why I began to do the dusting.

In the first hour, we always have a student from a Normal School, Mr. Bu, as teacher. Did you ever hear such a name? But he is not half bad, Mr. Bu; he is exceedingly kind. You see, very often I don’t get the dusting and arranging done in time, but he doesn’t say anything if I, once in a while, keep on dusting after the lesson begins.

“It is absolutely necessary, Mr. Bu,” I say.

And it really is. All the desks, the window-sills, the maps, even up on the platform around Mr. Bu’s elbows on his desk, I have to dust. It was only once I did that, however.

At recess I clean the ink-wells. I think it is fun to do such things. Sometimes I dust the ledges of the logs that make the walls, so that the dusting shall last as long as possible; for it is much pleasanter to go about dusting than to sit still at your desk.

Well, it was one summer day just before vacation. Such sunshine you never saw. The sea was one mass of sparkles; two or three mackerel boats lay outside the islands. Oh, to row out there now, to sit in the boat and dabble in the blue-green water, to land on Marcussen’s Island, and run up on the hill there and shout and play and enjoy yourself!

But no. I must go to school; and I didn’t know a word of my lesson which was about Olaf Kyrre. I had been certain the evening before that I should have time to study my “History of Norway” in the morning; but let me tell you, it isn’t safe to depend on time ahead that way. There wasn’t a minute. I had to dash down the hill through the dean’s garden to get to school in time, and even then I only just got there before the bell rang.

The dust lay thick everywhere. It was highly necessary for me to be on hand, that was evident. But would you believe it? Antoinette Wium had taken it upon herself to begin to put the room in order and manage things; but she soon found out her mistake.

“No, Miss,” said I. “Be so good as to sit down. It is I who shall do this. Do you suppose Mr. Bu wants so much confusion here? Be so good as to take your seat and keep quiet.”

So Antoinette had to go back to her desk. Mr. Bu said nothing but I could see plainly that he agreed with me. Of course there should be order and quiet in the class-room.

Mr. Bu is rather queer, however. When the weather is fine, he leans out of the window the whole lesson hour, asks the questions out in the air and we answer from where we sit, back in the room. We get awfully lively, you may be sure, but when there is too much noise behind him, he comes in from the window, very angry.

“You’ll get marked for this; you’ll get marked for such behavior,” he says, shaking his forefinger at us and glaring fiercely around the class-room. But we know very well that he won’t give us any marks, for Mr. Bu is after all very easy-going.

Antoinette Wium was highly offended with me because I would not allow her to attend to the class-room. While Mr. Bu was hanging out of the window, a ball of paper hit me suddenly on the head. On the inside of the paper was written:

“There ought to be a limit to self-conceit as well as to other things. You are the most conceited person in the whole world, Inger Johanne High-and-Mighty. Mother says so, too.”

Pooh! That fat Mrs. Wium who goes through the streets with her market-basket, and the neck of her dress unfastened! As if I cared the least bit for her. I wrote a note in reply immediately:

“Whether your mother likes me or not is for me a bagatelle.”

I really must ask if you don’t think that that was well said?

The bell rang, Mr. Bu came in from the window, assigned our new lesson and the class was dismissed.

Well, that was good. In this recess I must learn what I could about Olaf Kyrre, for I didn’t know the least speck about him. But there was no studying for me, I assure you, for the instant Mr. Bu shut the door, Antoinette came at me, angry as could be because I had called her mother a bagatelle, she said.

“It may easily be that your mother is a bagatelle,” said I. “But I never called her that.”

“Yes, you did,” said Antoinette.

“No, I didn’t,” said I.

We kept on disputing that way the whole recess. I held my “History of Norway” in my hand but didn’t get a chance to see a word in it.

Pshaw! Now we must have arithmetic. There stood Mr. Holmesland at the door.

“Mental arithmetic! Mental arithmetic!” shouted the class. “Let us have mental arithmetic.”

Mr. Holmesland is a stout man with sleepy-looking eyes and a reddish beard. He said never a word, but walked up to his desk and sat down with his hand under his cheek as usual.

“Written arithmetic,” he said emphatically when he was well settled.

“Oh, no, Mr. Holmesland! Mental arithmetic, mental——”

“When I was outside the door,” said Mr. Holmesland, “I thought that we should have mental arithmetic to-day, but since you shouted and screamed so, I decided that you should not have it.”

A grumbling murmur came from all the desks.

“Written arithmetic,” said Mr. Holmesland again. His water-blue eyes looked as if they would shut any minute.

As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely the same whether it is mental or written arithmetic, for I am equally poor in both.

Isn’t it remarkable that I cannot do anything with numbers? Just think, I believe it would be perfectly impossible for me to do a “rule of three” example correctly! How I shall manage when I come to higher mathematics I can’t imagine, especially if we have Mr. Holmesland. He only looks heavily down at you and lets it go, and one can’t learn a great deal that way. At any rate I can’t, I’m sure of that. But the most elaborate and difficult problems in arithmetic are just “rat for cat” to Anna Brynildsen. She gets every one correct to the last dot. That’s the kind of head she has.

When she goes up to Mr. Holmesland’s desk, gets “Correct” on all her examples, and comes down again with that unspeakably self-satisfied look of hers, she is so exasperating to me that I feel like flying right at her and knocking her over. My! Suppose I should do it some day!

I worked out four examples that hour. One I really thought was right, but the others I had no hope of.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Mr. Holmesland, as he drew a heavy mark through them all.

Pshaw!

“You are most remarkably incapable as an arithmetician,” said Mr. Holmesland. “I believe if any one asked you how many eyes you had, you would make a mistake in counting them.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the pupils at their desks, Anna Brynildsen with them—she who seldom laughs at anything. She laughed so exasperatingly, too, keeping her mouth tight shut, and not making any sound except “h’m, h’m, h’m.”

At last the bell rang and I rushed around opening windows. Fresh air I must have.

Anna Brynildsen took up her lunch-box and began to eat her sandwiches, made with sausage. She spends the whole recess eating.

This was the time to study my history lesson; but as I threw open the farthest window, the one that looks out on a little grassy place, I suddenly had an irresistible desire to jump out into that green grass. Although our class-room is on the first floor, it is quite far from the ground, because the foundation of the building is so high. Massa wanted to jump out, too, so out we went, I with my history book in my hand. Thump, thump! It was lots of fun. Other girls jumped out after us, thump, thump, thump!

Anna Brynildsen was the only one of the class who didn’t jump out. She stood at the window eating her bread and sausage.

We stormed back into the room, out of the window again, every one of us. What uproarious fun we had!

And then, my gracious, if recess wasn’t over!

Ugh! Olaf Kyrre. I read hastily as we went into the class-room. Mr. Juul, who teaches our history class, was already there. Such a beautiful nose as he has! It could be a model for a sculptor, it is so finely shaped.

Mr. Juul swung himself up to his chair on the platform.

“Close the windows,” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Juul! Let us have one open; just one!”

“Close the windows, I say.”

Pshaw! We have to sit as if in a box with the lid on when Mr. Juul has the class.

Now for the lesson. How in the world should I get along when I didn’t know anything at all about him,—that bothersome old Olaf Kyrre.

I had a faint hope that Mr. Juul might forget to call on me. I wouldn’t even look at him for fear that might remind him of me; and I made myself as small as possible and sat as still as a stone.

“Kima Pirk, please begin.”

Kima stood up and began to rattle off something. She almost never knows the lesson, but when she is called upon to recite, she swallows and mutters and stutters and uses her mouth so queerly that it is almost impossible to understand anything she says.

For once, I was glad to hear her. Mr. Juul always calls on us in regular order, and since he had begun with Kima, who sat at the farthest end of the class from me, I should escape.

Oh, what a relief!—that I should not be called upon to recite.

Kima sputtered and stammered. Meanwhile I made a beautiful chicken out of paper, under my desk.

“What kind of a king was Olaf Kyrre?—Inger Johanne.”

I jumped up.

“He was—he was very bloodthirsty.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh, no,—he was very brave—only a little bloodthirsty.”

Mr. Juul went over to the window to get himself a glass of water.

Quick as a flash, I opened my history, placing another book so as to hide it. When Mr. Juul was in his seat again, I read a whole half page as if I knew it by rote.

I cast a glance at Mr. Juul. He was looking intently at me with those brown eyes of his.

“Inger Johanne! If I had not seen it myself, I should never have believed it, never—that you would cheat!”

“Inger Johanne cheated?” “Inger Johanne?” “Cheated?” different voices called in loud whispers from the desks as all the class turned and stretched their necks to look at me.

Oh, how sorry, how sorry I was! How I wished I had not done it. Sorry, ashamed, disgraced!

“You may go out into the hall, Inger Johanne, and stay there the rest of the hour,” said Mr. Juul in a deep voice.

I went out, every one in the class still staring at me.

I had been sent out into the hall before, but that was because I had been too lively; never for cheating. Never in my life for cheating. Oh, what a disgrace! What a disgrace! It was the very worst thing I could have done. What would Father say when he saw the marks in my report book? For I should surely be marked; I saw that by Mr. Juul’s manner. Oh, I should never in the world be happy again, never! How could I be?

I don’t know whether any of you ever stood out in the hall a whole hour, thinking of the marks you would get and the scoldings. Well, it is not at all comfortable. As the time dragged on, I could think of nothing to do but to reach up as far as I could on the walls and destroy the spider webs, setting free the captured flies that hung in the webs, buzzing.

At last the hour came to an end. All the class looked hard at me when I went back into the room. No one said anything, they only stared.

“Pooh!” said I, tossing my head and pretending there was nothing the matter; but I had to own to myself that it was frightfully embarrassing.

I would not go out at recess; no, not for anything would I go out. I sat at my desk the whole time and sketched pen-and-ink heads on a new blotting-paper. I felt as if I should never play any more, I was so disgusted with myself. Oh, no one should ever, ever cheat!

How remorseful I was, and how miserable, as I sat there alone that recess, while the girls were chattering and laughing and having a jolly time together out-of-doors!

During the last two hours of school we have Norwegian composition with the school principal. We had written compositions upon “Our Country’s Productions,” and they were to be returned to us on this day. Usually the hours with the principal are the pleasantest any one could have, but to-day everything was horrid for me.

Mr. Juul had, of course, told him that I had been cheating. I scarcely dared look at him.

When the lesson time came to an end, the principal said, “Inger Johanne, come with me to my office.”

What he said to me in there I shall never tell. It made me terribly unhappy and I cried and cried. Never, oh! never in my life would I cheat again. Probably the principal was sure of that, too, because he did not put any bad mark in my report-book.

As soon as I got home, however, I told Mother what I had done, for everything is easier to bear, somehow, no matter what it is, if I only tell Mother.

XIV

THE TIME I NEARLY DROWNED

Oh yes—that time——

In reality, this story isn’t much to my credit, but you shall hear it nevertheless.

You ought to see how many queer persons there are in our town. I mean persons who are not exactly right in their minds, but who are allowed to go about because they never do any harm. I used to think it was great fun to run after them and tease them, but I never do that any more; and the reason I do not is just what I am going to tell you about.

Well, Mrs. Lennertsen is one of these queer persons. She is awfully dressy, wears a French shawl that trails on the ground and carries a blue silk parasol with a jointed handle so that it can be turned at different angles. When any one greets her, she stands stockstill and makes a grand curtsey such as we learn at dancing-school. She is so old that there are criss-cross wrinkles all over her face.

With every single ship that comes in Mrs. Lennertsen expects seven barrels of gold, neither more nor less. Under her shawl she carries a whip and is not at all slow in bringing it out to use if any one teases her; and she is awfully comical then. But I never tease her any more, I really don’t.

Well, then there is Jens Julsen, with a humpy nose such as the ancient kings of Oldenborg had. He wears a worn-out silk hat and sings songs, one after the other, incessantly. After each song he says, “Finis,” and immediately starts a new one.

But never mind about Jens Julsen now. Evan “Henny-Penny” (I don’t know his real last name) is the one this story is about. He is small and rosy-cheeked and wears a gray coat that reaches down to his shoes; and he carries a big staff that is much longer than himself. It is really a big, stout fence rail, and you can understand what a long way he can reach and hit with that. He was once a school-teacher, but now he lives at the old yellow poorhouse, although he usually spends the whole day on the wharf. There is no one that all of us children have been so horrid to as to Evan Henny-Penny.

Whenever he showed himself at the street corner we were after him, shouting, teasing, and snatching at his coat. The rough boys from the Point may have treated him shamefully, but among the children in our part of the town, I believe I was the worst.

Every single day I thought of some new way to tease him. Of course, at that time, it seemed mighty good fun; now it makes me loathe myself to think how I plagued him, for if it had not been for that queer little Evan——

It was one afternoon in October. The weather was just the kind that I like so much, a strong gale blowing from the sea, high tide washing over the wharf, and a rumbling, roaring sound like thunder in the air. The big ash-trees near the church writhed and creaked and groaned; the weather-vane turned round and round, squeaking every minute. All that blowing and stir and noise everywhere suits me exactly. I just love it.

But I could never get any of my friends to enjoy it with me.

“Ugh! No.—Are you going out in such weather?” they say when I ask them to go. “Ugh! Such frightful weather.”

So I go alone, up on the hills, or down on the wharf, or anywhere.

That day, too, I was alone. I had gone to the big ice-house at South Bay, because some one had said that a big ship was adrift out there and I wanted to see it. But, if you please, that was all bosh—there was neither ship nor anything else worth looking at in South Bay.

When I go off alone that way I think of tremendously entertaining things. I think of families with ever so many children and the jolly times they have. I know how all the people I invent look, and what they say, and what they do; and they travel over the whole wide world. I decide everything for them. I am queen over them all. To invent this way is the most entertaining thing in the world. Sometimes I tell Karen and Mina about it, but I can see plainly that they don’t understand at all what I mean.

“Do you know these people?” asked Karen once.

“No, I just invent them, you know.”

“Can there be any fun in that?” sniffed Karen, scornfully. Since then I never talk about what I think of when I am alone.

I remember well that as I walked to the icehouse at South Bay that afternoon I made up a story about two little girls who traveled alone all the way to Egypt to visit an awfully rich uncle.

Since there was no ship or anything interesting to be seen, I sat down on the edge of the wharf, thinking it would be fun to see whether the waves would dash high enough to wet my legs if I stretched them far down. One wave after another came rolling in, black but topped with white foam. Whack!—splash!—one struck against the wharf. No, it did not reach me. Now another wave,—an enormous one—but that did not reach me either.

Some one came pattering along behind me. I turned around and saw Evan Henny-Penny with his long staff.

“Is that you, Henny-Penny?” I called.

“You’ll fall into the water if you sit there,” said Evan.

“Shall I really, Henny-Penny?”

He came nearer, right to where I was sitting. I got up hastily. I am not in the least afraid of Evan, but for all that, it made me feel queer to have him come so close to me with that long staff of his.

As you can well understand, I hadn’t a clear conscience with regard to Evan, so horrid as I had always been to him with my teasing and calling him names.