ap and cried and cried.

But it was Sunday and the carpenter was not at home.

"Run after my little kitchen saw then," said Mother. "Bring the
meat-axe, too," called Father.

Oh, how would they manage? It seemed to me my head would surely be sawed
or chopped to pieces.

[Illustration: They just hauled and pulled me as hard as they
could.--_Page 67._]

Well, now began a sawing and hammering around me. When Mother sawed I
was not afraid, but when Father began I was in terror, for Father, who
is so awfully clever with his head, is so unpractical with his hands
that he can't even drive a nail straight. So you can imagine how clumsy
he would be about getting a head out of a board fence.

The others all had to laugh finally, but I truly had no desire to laugh
until my head was well out. In fact, I didn't feel much like laughing
then either, for really it had been horrid.

Ever since that time Karsten and Nils Peter have teased me about that
Chili stamp. They say that getting my head stuck fast was a punishment
for putting my oar in everywhere. Think of it--as if I _did_ try to
manage other people's affairs so very much!

But it certainly is horrid when you can't control your own head. You
just try it and see.

CHAPTER V

LEFT BEHIND

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.

"Hurry--hurry," he keeps saying, as he goes in and out. Mother gets
tired of it, but that makes no difference. Besides, all husbands are
like that, Mother says; unreasonable when other people go away, and
still worse to travel with.

An hour and a half before the steamboat could be expected, we had to
trudge down to the wharf; for Father wouldn't give in. Mother had to sit
on a bench down there, with meal-sacks all around her; but Karsten and I
and Ola Bugta and the other longshoremen on the wharf went up on Little
Beacon to look for the steamboat.

People usually wish for good weather when they are going to travel; but
I wish for a storm; for to plunge through the waves, u