n, 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. If I could only make a journey to the North Pole and do what I
wanted to there, I should send down some lovely soft snow-drifts and
some smooth blue glistening ice in a jiffy, to all the boys and girls
who are wishing for them day after day.

In the meantime I am glad that I have begun to write this book in
winter, otherwise I should be bored to death.

Of course we go out-of-doors now too, even though the mild weather is
disgusting; but when it storms as hard as it did in the autumn, making
the old elm-trees crash and swish so that we can scarcely hear ourselves
talk, then it is not comfortable to play out-of-doors, I assure you. At
such times we often shut ourselves up in the little room over the
wood-shed. There is nothing up there but a keg of red ochre which we
paint ourselves with, but really we have lots of fun there,
nevertheless.

Ezekiel always seizes the chance to give a lecture in the wood-shed, and
his words gush out like water from a fountain. When I get tired of it, I
sneak around behind him and give him a little English punch in the back,
for I am very clever at boxing, you must know. "Come on! Can you use
your fists like an Englishman?" And then I roll my hands round very
fast, just as I have seen the English sailors do, and give him a quick
punch in the stomach with my fist.

Ezekiel squirms about like a worm, and defends himself with his small
weak fingers. The others laugh, and Ezekiel and I laugh with them, and
so we all laugh together.

* * * * *

Well, now you know us all, and you know what it is like around here.

CHAPTER II

AN INTERRUPTED CELEBRATION

My, how well I remember the day that we almost killed the dean's wife!
That sounds queer; but it really was a live dean's wife that we really
came within a hair's breadth of killing. And that, while we were just
playing and celebrating the Seventeenth of May--the day when Norway
adopted her own constitution, you know.

Now you shall hear how it happened.

Right behind our old house we have a whole big breezy hill. If any of
you live down on the coast, you will know how beautiful it is and what
fun one can have up on such a hill. If you have only seen it as you went
by on the steamer, you would never imagine how lovely it is up on bare
gray hills that look out