CHAPTER X

THE MASON'S LITTLE PIGS

Ugh! I can't stand rainy weather! Especially in summer! Perhaps some people may like a nasty drizzling rain that keeps on day after day right in the middle of summer, so that the gooseberries drop from the bushes, and there is only a soft wet plot of ground where one expected big, magnificent strawberries and had joyfully kept watch for them day after day. As for the rose-bushes, only the yellow hips are left on them. Half decayed rose petals lie sprinkled on the wet earth, and the mignonette and daisies lie flat on the ground all mouldy and limp.

Our old house on the hill is the most delightful house in town,--that is really true--but in rainy weather it is perhaps a little wet up there.

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.

Detestable as these long rainy spells are, Karsten and I have lots of fun afterwards, when it has poured down by tubfuls for several days and the hilltop is really soaking and running over with water.

Karsten and I build waterworks, you see; we build dams and make sluices and waterfalls. That's fun, I can tell you!

Ma.s.sa and Mina can't imagine how I can enjoy myself with anything like that now that I am so old--thirteen. They make fun of me and tattle about it at school and to the boys; but I don't bother myself the least grain about that. I get my feet sopping wet, sure enough, and the bottom of my dress, and way up my sleeves; and then I have to creep up the back stairs to change my clothes so that Mother won't see how wet they are.

But oh! the fun Karsten and I have!

Sometimes we begin away back on the hilltop and make sluices, and wall them up with heather and moss, so as to make the water run where we want it to. Karsten carries the stones and gets fiery red in the face, even with his hat off. I do the walling up and give the orders, for I am the engineer, you see.

It must be awfully nice to be an engineer when you are grown up, but sad to say, I never can be, since I am a girl. However, Karsten can be the engineer and I can sit in his office and be the one to manage the whole concern, just as I do on the hilltop here; for Karsten can never think of anything new to do, but I can.

A little way down the hill we have our reservoir which all the streams run into. It is in a particularly good place, a deep hollow close to the top of the steepest precipice on the whole hill. 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 ma.s.s of white foam. It thunders and crashes and spatters just like a real waterfall.

The only nuisance about it is that it lasts so short a time. Even if the pond is full up to the brim the water can all run out in five minutes.

On that account we always try to let off the waterfall when there is some one besides ourselves to see it. It doesn't matter who it is, even if it is only the stone-breaker's child, but we must have at least one spectator, or we shouldn't care to let off the waterfall.

Right on the slope below the precipice is the cottage of Soren, the mason. Our land joins on to his farm. When we let out the waterfall the water streams down over our land right behind the big walnut tree. It had always taken the very same course and it never entered my head that it _could_ take any other.

But now you shall hear. It had rained twelve days on a stretch, and that just as the summer vacation had begun. In fact, it seems to me it always does--every year. Well, never mind that. At any rate Karsten and I were almost bored to death. It was all right for Karsten to stand out in the rain and sail birch bark boats in the brewing vat which stood full of water out in the farmyard, but I outgrew such play years ago, of course.

As for sitting and reading books in the very middle of the summer, there is no sort of sense in that. At least _I_ don't think there is any fun in it; so I will say outright that I was dreadfully bored.

Finally, one day, out came the sun. It shone and it glittered. The gra.s.s, the fences, and the washed-out stones all dripped and sparkled as the sun sent its blazing light upon them. And there wasn't a crack or a crevice on the whole hilltop that wasn't br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with water.

Oh! what a waterfall we could make to-day!

"Karsten! Karsten! Will you come with me and make a waterfall?"

Karsten had been so desperately bored the afternoon before that he had put up a swing in the loft. As I called him I saw his face up there in the dusty green window. The second after, he was down in the yard, and we were both off for the hilltop. The one single tool that we have to work with is a little old trough which we use for dipping up water when we need to.

Oh! such a summer day as it was up on that hilltop! with the sun sparkling on the wet purple heather, on the blueberries and red whortleberries and great wavy ferns covered with pearly water-drops!

But Karsten and I had something else to do, I can a.s.sure you, than to look at all this beauty. For to-day we were going to make Niagara Falls!

We had water enough.

O my! how Karsten and I slaved that morning! We made an entirely new watercourse so that we had ever so much more water for the pond. And then the pond itself had to be made better and bigger. It was ready to overflow any minute,--it was so full. Karsten slipped in twice and got wet way above his knees. My! how we laughed!

It seemed as if there was always a little tuft of moss to stuff in or a stone to lay in better position, in order to make the pond really tight and firm; but at last we had it finished.

But now there was no one at hand, not a single person, to admire the glorious sight of the waterfall, and I didn't want to have all our hard work go for nothing. Karsten wanted to let the waterfall loose anyway, but I wouldn't do it, and we had almost got into a quarrel when, as good luck would have it, Thora Heja came trudging along across the hilltop. Thora Heja is an old peasant woman who used to work in the fields but now goes round getting her living by drowning cats and cutting hens' heads off for people.

"Thora Heja, where are you going?" I called out.

"Oh! I am going down to attend to two hens at the s.e.xton's," shouted Thora across to us.

"Wait a little and you shall see Niagara Falls!"

"See what?"

"Wait a little and you shall see something wonderful!"

Karsten and I grabbed our big stakes and quick as lightning tore away the dam. However it happened, I really don't know, but it must be that we tore away some big stones we had never disturbed before, and that our doing this made the whole waterfall take an entirely different direction. It foamed and crashed--you couldn't hear yourself think!--It was really magnificent.

"Hurrah!" shouted Karsten and I.

But right through the tremendous roar of the waterfall, there came cleaving the air the wildest pig squeal you ever heard, from the ground down below us. The waterfall kept on roaring, and the pig squeals grew worse and worse.

It never occurred to me for a moment that the pig squeals had anything to do with our waterfall. We couldn't see what was going on below from where we stood. I thought Thora Heja was behaving in the queerest way, however, for instead of standing quietly and admiring the waterfall as we had expected, she began to shriek and point and throw up her arms beseechingly and try to tell us something; finally she took to her heels and vanished through the wet gra.s.s down the steep hillside, shouting and screaming as she went.

Soon after we heard many voices down below all talking at once, but the waterfall kept on with its rush and noise, for, as I have said, there was a tremendous lot of water in the pond that day. All this happened in a much shorter time than it takes me to write it, you know.

I heard Soren, the mason's, angry voice.

"Such a thing as this sha'n't be permitted! I won't have it--not if I swing for it! Even if it is the judge's children themselves----"

A sudden suspicion popped into my head.

"Karsten! Something must have gone wrong with our waterfall!"

"I'll run down and see!"

"No! Are you crazy? Don't go! Can't you hear how angry Soren, the mason, is?"

By this time the whole pond had emptied itself out. The waterfall had subsided into little trickling rills, coursing in straggling lines down the precipice. Then Soren, the mason, appeared in the distance, having reached a piece of ground where he could look across to where we were.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She began to shriek and point and throw up her arms.--_Page 151._]

He is a thin old man, and dresses in white mason's clothes, and has a frightfully sharp chin. He was as red in the face as a boiled lobster, shook his fists at us and shouted:

"Aha! it's a good thing I have witnesses here against you--you two rapscallions! setting waterspouts running all over people. You shall hang for it! you shall hang for it! Two little pigs are dead and the others nigh unto it. If there never has been a lawsuit before, there shall be one now for such imposition and abuse. I am going to your father this very minute to complain of you."

And Soren, the mason, started up the hill in a terrible hurry, straight to Father's office.

Karsten and I looked for an instant at each other. I had a cowardly wish to run away at once.

"What shall we do?" asked Karsten. "Shall we hide up on the top of the hill here all day?"