It was a chance no less fortunate for
Peter, who was not accustomed to gazing at the sky with his feet in the
air. But he fell smack into the kettle, head foremost. It had been
decreed, however, that all should come out right with him, that day; the
fire had died out, the water was cold, and the kettle awry, so that he
got off with nothing worse than a scratched forehead, a peeled nose, and
two well scraped cheeks, and, thank Heaven! nothing was broken but the
saucepan.

When his better half entered the kitchen, she found Master Graybeard
looking very sheepish and bloody.

'Well! well!' said she, planting her arms akimbo and her two fists on
her haunches: 'who's the best housekeeper, pray? I have mowed and
reaped, and here I am as good as I was yesterday, while you, _you_,
Mister Cook, Mister Stay-at-home, Mr. Nurse, where is the butter,
where's the sow, where's the cow, and where's our dinner? If our little
one's alive yet, no thanks to you. Poor little fellow!--what would
become of it without kind and careful mamma?'

Whereupon, Mrs. Peter begins to snivel and sob. Indeed, she has need to,
for is not sensibility woman's field of triumph, and are not tears the
triumph of sensibility?

Peter bore the storm in silence, and did well, for resignation is the
virtue of great souls!

PART V.

There, you have my story exactly as it is related, on winter evenings,
to impress ideas of wisdom on the minds of the young Norwegians. Between
the wife of Gudbrand and the wife of Peter the Graybeard they must
choose, at their own risk and peril.

'The choice is an easy one,' says an amiable lady-friend of mine, who
has just become a grandmother. 'Gudbrand's wife is the one to imitate,
not only on account of her prudence, but for her worth. You men are much
more amusing than you fancy: when your own self-esteem is at stake, you
love truth and justice about as much as bats love a glare of light. The
greatest enjoyment these gentlemen experience is in pardoning us when
they are guilty, and in generously offering to overlook our errors when
they alone are in the wrong. The wisest thing we can do is to let them
talk, and to pretend to believe them. That is the way to tame these
proud, magnificent creatures, and, by pursuing the plan perseveringly,
one may lead them about by the nose, like Italian oxen.

'But, aunty,' says a fair young thing beside us, 'one can't keep quiet
all the time. Not to yield when you're not in the wrong