Part 18 (1/2)

But that story of the bear at the saeter Petter and Karsten had to hear all summer long, for they were just as puffed up as ever.

Nothing impresses such conceited boys, you know.

CHAPTER XV

LOST IN THE FOREST

Oh, that awful, awful time! Even now I can wake in the middle of the night, start up in bed and stare around frightened and trembling, for I dream that I am in the dark forest alone, as I was that time at Goodfields. Well, I wasn't absolutely alone, but I was the oldest, you see, and so I had all the responsibility for both of us, and that is almost worse than to be alone.

It was little brother Karl who was with me. We children were going to have a blueberry party--that was the beginning of the whole thing. We wanted to treat all the grown-up boarders, and Mother Goodfields, and the maids too. They should all have blueberries with powdered sugar, nothing else; anyway that was enough. But we should need a lot of blueberries, oh, a frightful lot of them!

So we went off, each choosing his own clump of bushes, and picked and picked; and then Karlie-boy and I got lost. Now, you shall hear.

It was in the morning, a very hot morning. The air in the valley had been perfectly still all night. We had slept beside open windows with only a sheet over us.

Immediately after breakfast I flew to the forest, for I knew a place where I wanted to pick berries all by myself. Just as I was climbing over the fence of the home hill-pasture, Karl saw me and called out, ”I want to go with you--it's mean of you--oh! oh! to run away from me--I want to go too.”

He made such a hullabaloo with his screaming that I had to stop and wait for him. But one ought never in the world to humor screeching children, for no good comes of it. How much better it would have been for Karl if he had not been with me that long frightful day in the forest, and that queer evening in crazy Helen's hut,--for that is where we finally found ourselves.

Yes, when I have children, I shall be awfully strict and decided with them.

It was cool there in the forest. The suns.h.i.+ne came in only in golden stripes and spots. Never in my life have I seen so many blueberries and such high blueberry bushes as we found that day. I picked and picked.

Meanwhile Karl ate and ate, till he was nothing but one big blueberry stain,--he smeared himself so with the juice.

”Did Noah have berries with him in the ark?” asked Karl.

”No, indeed.”

”Then all the blueberries must have been drowned in the flood.”

”Ugh, what a silly you are!”

”Well, anyway, Noah had cannon with him in the ark.”

Oh, I get so sick of cannons with Karl! Whatever he talks about, he always mixes up something about cannons in it.

It was unspeakably fresh and still in the forest. I ran from one blueberry patch to another, but you may chop my head off if I understand in the least how it happened that we got lost; for I usually keep my eyes open and have my wits about me too.

All at once Karl sat himself down in a blueberry patch.

”Ugh--blueberries are disgusting,” said he.

”That's because you have stuffed yourself with them,” I replied.

”I want some bread and b.u.t.ter,” said Karl. ”And I'm tired--so tired.”

”Oh, keep still.”

A minute after, it was exactly the same.