The Birch and the Star, and Other Stories

"Hurrah, the Black Pond is frozen. The ice is more than an inch thick, and there's a crowd of boys down there!" shouted one of Viggo's classmates one Sunday morning, as he thrus...

When Mother had asked Viggo about Little Beate he answered that the country was full of vikings and wild beasts, and that he did not know anything about the doll.

One afternoon Viggo was walking home from school with a bag of books on his back. He marched straight as a stick with a soldierly step, for he was thinking of the time when he s...

Viggo was ten years old now. He no longer cared to become a viking when he grew up. To be an officer in the army was his one thought now; he would prefer to become a general of...

On her birthday her father had given her a beautiful straw hat. There were red ribbons around it, I can't tell you how pretty it was. Her mother had given her a pair of yellow s...

Now Big Beate had a brother who was bigger still than she. He was eight years old, and he was a wild, mischievous boy. His name was really only Viggo, but he had read an old sto...