Dikken Zwilgmeyer

“ Out of the hay must we come. Karsten was perfectly desperate with boredom.
“I’m going home,” he said. “I won’t stay here any longer, and I’m never, never in the world coming here again. They can eat their good food themselves for all of me.”
I wouldn’t tell Karsten so, but I felt just as [Pg 254] he did; and every night when I had gone to bed, I had a dreadful longing for home. I felt as if something heavy lay on my heart and clutched it. Why are they so afraid and won’t let us do anything? How queer old people are! When I am old I am not going to be like Great-Aunt, I’m sure of that. ”

“ Now it was Katrina the dwarf he was inviting. She could not believe at first that she was asked to a party at Kingthorpe.
“A dwarf like me would not be wanted at that fine place,” said poor Katrina.
“Yes, indeed, you are to come; you must come. There’s going to be a band of music the whole time.”
“Music? Is there to be music?”
“Yes, and awfully good things to eat.”
“Oh! but to think—music! It’s just heavenly to listen to music.”
“Well, you can sit and listen to music all day, and eat plums at the same time.” ”

“ It is great fun to slip in after old Peter, the bellows-blower, when he is going up to ring the bells; to grope your way up the steep worm-eaten stairs with cobwebs in every corner,—and the higher you go the narrower and steeper are the stairs; to hide yourself back of the timbers and in the corners so that Peter sha'n't see you; to stand there in that tremendous bell-clanging and then to rush down over the old stairs as if you were crazy, before Peter has shut the tower windows again and shuffled his way down. ”

“ Andreas choked and cried and dried his eyes on his jacket-sleeves, first one and then the other; but Karsten fairly bellowed—his way of crying.
The men kept on tearing up the heather so as to stop the fire, and scolding us constantly. I wonder whether you can possibly imagine how perfectly horrid it was. I shall never again have a bonfire of my own, if I live to be a hundred years old. ”

“ That afternoon Johnny Blossom sat crouched on the stone steps leading to the road. The fishing rod lay beside him, but he did not feel like going fishing. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, thinking of Uncle Isaac. It might easily be that just now, this minute, Uncle Isaac stood outside that great golden gate—the gate that leads into Paradise—and knocked on it. To think that God can hear a man’s little knock. ”

“ Karsten got braver and braver.
"I was no more scared out of my wits than I ever am," said he. "I screamed only because—because—well, just so that Petter could hear where I was!"
"Such a horrid dog!" said Petter, reaching after Burmann.
"You could just have scratched his back as you do to bears in menageries," said I. Augusta laughed so that her laughter echoed through the whole place, and I teased them as much as I could. When I really make a point of it, I'm awful at teasing—it is such fun.
"Ugh! Girls are nothing but rubbish," said Karsten. ”

“ All the people in the town think that our house is haunted. They say that old Customs Officer Borgen, who used to own the house and who has been dead for many, many years is the ghost that haunts it.
The house is awfully old, with a tremendously long sloping roof, a big garret, lots of closets and poke-holes under the eaves, and a pitch-dark hall with unexpected steps, over which people who don’t know about them tumble head over heels. ”

“ Yes, as Uncle Isaac had said, there was always something you wanted to buy for yourself. What was that other thing Uncle Isaac had said? The man with the most love in his heart was the greatest? He who was kind was greater than he who was strong?
How hard he had hit Tellef in the face! How the blood had spurted out from his nose! It was too bad. Tellef had not been out to play last night or today either. How that jacket of his looked, torn that way! Really, it was a perfect shame.
Again and again Johnny Blossom opened his hand and looked at the silver pieces. ”

“ From our fort people down there look just like darning-needles; from the very top of the hill they look like a swarming mass of little pins.
I remember distinctly that particular Seventeenth of May; the spring had come so early that we already had fine young birch leaves and clear mild air. For several days we had been talking about a feast that we wanted to have in the dungeon, for there we should be wholly out of sight. There was to be a salute, speeches and songs. Peter and Karsten were always the gunners. ”

“ Madam Igland has an enormous garden with a high board fence around it. To call it a beautiful garden would be a sin and a shame. The whole place is filled with beds of carrots, parsley, cabbages, onions and such things; while at one end there is a row of currant-bushes and an old tumble-down summer-house that stands with one side on the street. Madam Igland is a market-gardener, you see, and sells vegetables to the townsfolk. However, I say wrong when I say she is a gardener, for she can’t even walk, but sits all day long in a wheel-chair by the window. ”

“ What it was that wasn’t much to do, Tellef didn’t say. Johnny only stared out over the gray-blue splashing waves.
Only think! He might have been lying under those waves now!
And all at once the truth smote him: he ought not to have done this; he had known all the time that he ought not, and yet—he had done it.
It was only an excuse when he had told himself that it was all right to sail with an umbrella. He knew perfectly well that it wasn’t. Ugh! how disobedient he had been, he who was heir of Kingthorpe, too! Before, it didn’t matter so very much if he were disobedient ”