s 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!
But you mustn't expect _gratitude_ in this world. Many a time since then
has Lisa come tiptoeing along after us on the street, tossing her head
this way and that, mimicking us, to show how self-important we are! And
_that_ after we saved the stupid creature from drowning!

OUR HOME

We live up on a hill in a lovely old house. People call it an old
rattletrap of a house, but that is nothing but envy because they don't
live there themselves. There are big old elm-trees around the house
which shade it and make the back part of the deep rooms quite dark. The
rafters show overhead, and the floors rock up and down when you walk
hard on them, just because they are so old. There is one place in the
parlor floor where it rocks especially. When no one is in there except
Karsten and myself, we often tramp with all our might where the floor
rocks most, for we want dreadfully to see whether we can't break through
into the cellar.

There are several gardens belonging to our house. One big garden has
only plum-trees with slender trunks and a little cluster of branches and
leaves high, high up. When I walk down there under the plum-trees, I
often imagine that I am down in the tropics, wandering under palm-trees.
I have a garden of my own, too. I wouldn't have mentioned it
particularly if there weren't one remarkable fact about it. Really and
truly, nothing will grow in it but that dark blue toad-flax--you know
what that is. Every single spring I buy seeds with my pocket money, and
plant and water and take care of them, but when summer comes there is
nothing in the garden but great big toad-flax stalks all gone to seed.
It is awfully tiresome, especially when they have such a horrid name.

PLAYMATES

Now I think it is time to describe all of us boys and girls who play
together, and whom I am going to tell about in my book.

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. Still, Peter is very ni