Part 2 (1/2)

”You can depend upon it that Peter will get a thras.h.i.+ng,” said Karsten, who also felt the excitement of the moment. ”But if it were I”--he grew very earnest--”I'd throw myself on my back and stretch my legs up in the air and kick so that n.o.body could come near me. He shouldn't beat me, no indeed, he'd soon find that out.”

It was all over with the celebration. Ezekiel proposed that we should finish up the refreshments--we divided the cake equally--and then we clambered down; but we took the path to our garden, not to the dean's.

We only whispered, we didn't speak a single loud word, till we got down.

We got a scolding, a thorough scolding, from the dean, but Mother cried when she heard what a calamity we had nearly brought about. And I minded Mother's tears much more than I did the dean's scolding.

Afterwards, when we asked Peter what had happened to him, he didn't answer, but just smiled feebly.

Yes, that is the way our Seventeenth of May celebration was interrupted!

[Ill.u.s.tration: The dean took Peter by the left ear and dragged him away.--_Page 39._]

CHAPTER III

MY FIRST JOURNEY ALONE

Well! I didn't travel entirely alone, either, you must know; for, you see, I had Karsten with me. But he was only nine years old that summer, so that it was about the same or even worse than traveling alone. To make a journey with small children by steamer isn't altogether comfortable, as any grown person will tell you.

It is curious how tedious everything gets at home in your own town when you have decided to make a journey. Whatever it might be that the boys and girls wanted to play--whether it was playing ball in the town square, or hide-and-go-seek in our cellar, or caravans in the desert up on the hilltop, or frightening old Miss Eina.r.s.en by knocking on her window (which is generally great fun)--it all seemed stupid and tiresome beyond description now.

For I was going to travel, going on a journey, and that is the jolliest, jolliest fun! Alas! for the poor stay-at-homes who couldn't go away but had to walk about the same old town streets, and smell street dust, and gutters, and stale sea-water in by the wharves.

But I have clean forgotten to tell you where I was going. Mother has a sister who is married to a minister. They live fifteen or twenty miles from our town and we go there every summer. But this summer, it had been decided that Karsten and I should go there alone for the first time.

The afternoon before we were to set out I went down back of our wood-shed, where all the boys and girls that I go with generally come every afternoon. It was hot enough to roast you and awfully dry and dusty; but I took my new umbrella down with me all the same. It wasn't really silk, but I had wound it and fastened it so tightly together that it looked just as slender and delicate as a real silk one. I wouldn't play ball with the rest of them. I just stood and swung my umbrella about.

”Have you got a new umbrella?” said Karen. ”Is it a silk one?” asked Netta. ”You've got eyes in your head,” I answered. And so they all thought it was a silk one. I couldn't play ball with them, I said, because I had to go in and pack. Now that wasn't true at all, for I knew well enough that Mother had done all the packing; but it sounded so off-hand and important. They all teased me to stay down with them for a while, but no indeed, far from it. ”I have too much to do. I start to-morrow morning early. Good-bye.”

”Good-bye and a happy journey,” shouted the company.

When I got in the house I was a little sorry that I hadn't stayed out with the others; for I hadn't a thing to do but go from one room to another and tighten the shawl-straps for the twentieth time at least. I thought the afternoon would never come to an end.

Early in the morning, before it was really light, the maid came into the room and shook me and whispered, ”Now you must get up. It's half-past four o'clock. Get up! The steamer goes at half-past five, you know.” Oh, how dreadfully sleepy I was, but it was great fun all the same. The sun was not s.h.i.+ning into my room yet, but on the church tower it glowed like a fire. The weather was going to be good. Hurrah! All the doors and windows of the sleeping-rooms stood wide open. It was so sweet and fresh and quiet everywhere, fragrant with the smell of the trees and fresh garden earth outside. We went in to say good-bye to Father and Mother at their bedside.

”Remember us to everybody and be nice, good children,” said Mother.

”Don't lose everything you have with you,” said Father. Humph!

_Lose_--Father seemed to forget that I was nearly grown up now.

As we went down the hill, the stones under the elm-trees were still all moist with dew. Oh! how quiet it was out-of-doors! Suddenly away down in the town a c.o.c.k crew. Everything seemed very strange.

Karsten and I ran ahead and Ingeborg, the maid, came struggling after us with our big green _tine_.[1] Suddenly a desperate anxiety came over me.

Suppose the steamboat should go off and leave us! Then how we ran! We left Ingeborg and the _tine_ and everything else behind. When we turned round the corner into the market square, the sun streamed straight into our eyes and there by the custom-house wharf lay the steamboat, with steam up and sacks of meal being put on board. Karsten and I dashed across the square. Pshaw! we were in plenty of time. There wasn't a single pa.s.senger aboard yet. It is a little steamboat, you know, that only goes from our town over to Arendal. I got Karsten settled on a seat, kneeling and facing the water, and then established myself in a jaunty, free and easy manner by the railing as if I were accustomed to travel. Ole Bugta and Kristen Snau and all the other clodhoppers on the wharf should never imagine that this was the first time I had been aboard a steamboat.

[Footnote 1: Tine (p.r.o.nounced tee'ne) a covered wooden box with handle on top.]

Soon that skin-and-bone Andersen, the storekeeper, got on the boat, and then came little Magnus, the telegraph messenger, jogging along. Magnus is really a dwarf. He is forty years old and doesn't reach any higher than my shoulder; but he has an exceedingly large old face. He clambered up on a bench. He has such short legs that when he sits down his legs stick straight out into the air, just as tiny little children's do when they sit down. Then came Mrs. Tellefsen, in a French shawl, and dreadfully warm and worried. ”When the whistle blew the first time, I was still in my night-clothes,” she confided to me.

The whistle blew the third time. I smiled condescendingly down to Ingeborg, our maid, who stood upon the wharf. I wouldn't for a good deal be in her shoes and have to turn back and go home again now. Far up the street appeared a man and woman shouting and calling for us to wait for them. ”Hurry up! Hurry up!” shouted the captain. That was easier said than done; for when they came nearer I saw that it was that queer Mr.