Dikken Zwilgmeyer

“ If you have never been in a great forest, you cannot possibly imagine anything so bewildering. Trees and trees and trees in every direction and nothing else; no clear space, no opening anywhere. But even yet I wasn't a bit afraid. The sunshine was bright, the forest air fragrant and I had three quarts of blueberries in my basket—three quarts at the very least. But Karl was heavy to drag along and my berry basket weighed down my other arm, and there was no end to the trees. ”

“ It is a shame to tease any one, but I do love to tease Karsten, for he gets so excited that he flushes scarlet out to the tips of his ears and looks awfully funny! Then he runs after me—which is, of course, just what I want—and if he catches me, gives me one or two good whacks; but usually we are the best of friends. Karsten likes to talk about wonderfully strong men and how much they can lift on their little finger with their arm stretched out; and he is great at exaggeration. People say I exaggerate and add a sauce to everything, but they ought to hear Karsten! ”

“ 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. ”

“ So Billy-goat was put into the pitch-dark coal-cellar—and had to stay there the whole night.
When we went down the next morning it stood on two legs and danced sideways from pure joy. But when Karsten took it out into the court, pop! away went the goat over the low fence into the hotel-keeper's garden, then out by an unlatched gate into the wide, wide world.
"No," said Mother firmly, "you may not go to look for it, nor will I ask the police to find it. If I haven't suffered and paid enough for that creature——"
Poor little Billy-goat! ”

“ Any boy with more grown-up, mannish airs than Petter Kloed puts on could not be found the world over. He wears long trousers and has been in the theatre a thousand times, he says; he smokes cigarettes too; and, always, about everything, no matter what it is, he says, pooh! he has seen that before; so it seems as if there were nothing left that could amuse him. Andrine admires him sometimes, I know that very well, but such silly puppies can go or stay for all I care. However, it was jolly to have him with us on the saeter trip,—just for the fun of teasing him, you know. ”

“ All it needs is a little walling up on one side, but that has to be very strong and solid; for sometimes we have more than two feet of water in the reservoir, and then it will easily overflow.
After we have it all built, comes the great moment of letting the waterfall loose. Karsten and I each have a stout stake,—quick as lightning we punch a hole through the dam, and down rushes the waterfall over the precipice. The yellowish marsh water which we have led to the pool from way back on the hilltop is one mass of white foam. It thunders and crashes and spatters just like a real waterfall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We live in a little town on the sea-coast. It is much more fun to live in a little town than a big one, for then you know every one of the boys and girls, and there are many more good places to play in; and all the sea besides. Oh, yes! I know very well that there are lots of small towns that do not lie by the sea. They must be horrid!
Think how we have the great ocean thundering in against the shore, wave after wave. Oh, it is delightful! Any one who has not seen that has missed a really beautiful sight. It is beautiful both in summer and winter ”

“ We stood up in the wagon and shouted hurrah as long as we could see Augusta in the saeter hut door, and after that we sang all the way down the mountain.
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. ”

“ One day a man from Vegassheien came into our kitchen with four live chickens that he wanted to sell. All hens, he said. We had never had any pets at our house except Bouncer, our big black cat; and Karsten and I were seized at once with an overwhelming desire to own these four half-grown, golden-brown chickens, who lay so patiently in the bottom of the peasant's basket, put their heads on one side and looked up at us with their little round black eyes. Oh, if Mother only would buy these darling chickens for us! It is such fun to have pets. ”

“ All the water which gathers on the hilltop back of the house runs down towards us, you see. It trickles and streams in brooks and tiny waterfalls over the stones, through moss and heather, takes with it a lot of earth from the kitchen garden (where, truth to tell, there wasn't much beforehand) , and washes out deep gullies in our hillside, leaving only the clean stones. Every time that it rains really in earnest for several days, Father has to put wagon-loads of new earth on the hill to make it look a little respectable again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Never in my life have I traveled so far as when Mother, Karsten and I visited Aunt Ottilia and Uncle Karl. And so unexpected as that journey was! I hardly had time to rejoice over it, even. It was all I could do to get time to write a post-card to Mina, who was visiting her grandmother at Horten, to ask her to come down on the wharf and see me, when the steamer stopped there on its way.
When we are to start on a journey, Father is always terribly afraid that we shall be too late for the steamboat. ”

“ We drove past little groups of peasants—women and girls with white linen head-dresses, and men in shirt-sleeves with their jackets over their arms, for the sun was roasting hot on the open roads. "Good cheer," they all greeted us with, and when we had passed I heard them [Pg 176] whisper to each other: "They are the summer folk from Goodfields."
More and more people gathered along the quiet roads; and there on a height stood the church,—a white wooden church with a low tower, and a church-bell which rang with a cracked sound out over the leafy forest and the fields and the still water. ”

“ Agnete a minute's rest or peace, and so, as you know, I got the cat.
Strangely enough, Mother was not in the least overjoyed when I came back carrying the forest-cat.
"I don't like these presents," said Mother. "There will only be tears and heartbreak when you have to leave them."
"Leave them!" exclaimed Karsten and I in one breath. "Oh, but you know they must go back home with us!"
"The goat is so smart about going up and down stairs," said Karsten. "And it likes to drink out of a teacup and it can perfectly well stay in the hotel garden over night in the city." ”

“ George was drawn up into another boat and they took us in tow. Lisa sat like a drowned rat and cried till she choked. Then Massa began to cry, too;—and so we came to the wharf.
For several days after the rescue I couldn't go into the street without people's stopping me and wanting a full account of how it all happened. Really, it is quite troublesome to be famous; but I like it pretty well, nevertheless.
When Mina and I met that stout, lighthouse-Lisa on the street next time, we couldn't imagine how we had ever been able to drag her into the boat! ”

“ Henrik-hut was the place we summer-boarder-children liked best because there was a dear old grandmother there with such soft, kind eyes. She could not go out any more, but sat always in an armchair beside the window; on the window-sill lay her much-worn brown prayer-book.
Oleana was Grandmother Henrik-hut's daughter. She was big, very much freckled, always good-natured, and talked a steady stream, often about her husband. She didn't seem highly delighted with him.
"Poor Kaspar!" said Oleana. "He hasn't brains enough for anything. ”

“ Here we established our four chickens. I immediately gave them names: Lova, Diksy, Valpurga, and Carola. Karsten and I stuffed them with food, and all day they went about scratching in our kitchen garden, where, however, nothing ever grows. With shallow, sandy soil, and a frightful lot of sun, you might know it couldn't amount to anything.
The first thing I did in the morning was to let out the chickens. They flapped and fluttered around me in the fresh, cool morning stillness under the maples. It always takes some time for the sunshine to get down to our place, because of the hill. ”

“ Of course, I might have teased him myself, but if Petter Kloed had tried it, he would have had me to reckon with. Karsten was furious if we even spoke to him.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"Hold your tongue," said Karsten.
Trond and Olsen rowed so that the sweat ran down their faces, and soon there we were, across. We saw Goodfields saeter above the hill and began running, all four of us. Nobody was to be seen outside the hut, and we nearly frightened the life out of Augusta, the milkmaid, when we stormed in upon her. ”

“ Gorrisen came back.
"Run away!" said one.
"Hide under your desk," said another.
But there he was in the doorway and the Principal with him.
"What is all this, Inger Johanne?" said the Principal. "You are too big to be so wild now. You are not such a bad girl, but you are altogether too thoughtless and use no judgment."
"Yes," I said. I was so glad the Principal didn't scold any harder.
"Of course you will be marked for this in your report-book; and remember this," the Principal shook his finger at me threateningly, "it won't do for you to behave like this many times, Inger Johanne. ”

“ Our cellar isn't underground. It is a high basement and in it is a big brewery and laundry, a big servant's room, and a big wine cellar where there is never any wine; on the other side of the basement is the storeroom for food and the potato cellar. The walls are brown and dark just from age; and the floor rocks so that I often wonder that the big casks and barrels, and fat Christine and Maren the washerwomen, who are forever washing there, do [Pg 87] not fall through, perhaps into some deep abyss underground. ”

“ In summer there is a lot of fun to be had everywhere, but especially on the delightful hill back of our house— (I will tell you all about that hill some other time) ,—but in winter, humph! What can girls and boys do in such horrid mild winters as we are now having, I should really like to know! Last year we had no snow to speak of, and here it is now after New Year's and I haven't yet, to my recollection, seen a single snowflake which didn't melt in five minutes, or any ice that didn't break through as soon as you stamped your heel on it. ”

“ The first few nights that the clock hung on the wall at Henrik-hut, Oleana did not have much sleep, for every time the clock struck, she awoke and called down blessings on all the guests at Goodfields.
"Everything goes by the clock with us now," said Oleana. "It's nothing at all to do the work at Henrik-hut when you have a clock." ”

“ CHAPTER XIII OLEANA'S CLOCK
At Goodfields, the houses for the farm laborers are up in the forest. Towards Goodfields itself, the forest is thick and dark, but up where it has been cleared, willows and alders grow in clumps, and there are tiny little fields and still smaller potato patches, belonging to each sun-scorched hut with its turf roof and windows of greenish glass. From the clearing you can look upward to the mountains, or downward, over the thick pines and through the leafy trees, to the smooth, shining fjord. ”

“ Can you think of anything more exciting than to meet a bear on the road?
Petter Kloed would just go very quietly to him and scratch his back. He had done that a hundred times in the menagerie, he said. For if you just approached a bear in the right way it was a very good-natured beast, said Petter [Pg 193] Kloed, as he lit a cigarette back there in the cart.
Karsten would rather wrestle with the bear and strangle him; for if any one wanted to see a muscle that was a stunner, they could just look here; and Karsten turned up his jacket sleeves while we all examined his muscle. ”

“ There is Peter, the dean's son, with his sleepy brown eyes and freckles as big as barleycorns. Peter is a cowardly chap. He never has any opinion of his own. And if he had one he would never dare to stand by it if you contradicted him. He's terribly afraid of the cold, too, and goes about with a scarf wound around his neck, and mittens if a single snowflake falls. [Pg 26] Still, Peter is very nice indeed; he does everything that I want him to.
Then there is my brother Karsten, but I've told you about him. He is a little younger than the rest of us.
Another boy is Ezekiel Weiby. ”