As I came home from school the next day I went round by Madam Land's.

Carolus stood in the yard eating Madam Land's chicken-feed and sour milk with excellent appet.i.te. His big red comb hung down over one eye. The other eye, that was free, he turned towards me as if he would say, "I know you well enough, Mistress Inger Johanne, but go your way--I intend to stay here for good and all."

"Well," I thought, "let them scold as they please about you, Carolus; you are surely the most beautiful c.o.c.k in all the world--but you are mine, you must remember."

When evening came I had studied out a plan for catching Carolus without Madam Land's seeing me. She kept her hens in a part of the wood-shed that was boarded off. Behind this was an open field, and high up in the back wall, right under the roof, there was a little window that always stood open. Through that window I meant to go to get Carolus. There was an old ladder in our barn; I got Peter and Karsten to carry it down the hill and set it up under the window. Both Peter and Karsten wanted to climb up, but I said no; such a difficult undertaking no one but myself could manage.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening and growing dark. I climbed the ladder and got to the top round all right. But whether it was that the ladder was rotten or that Peter and Karsten let go of it,--I had no sooner got hold of the window-sill and dragged myself in than down fell the ladder, breaking all to pieces as it fell.

So there I was in a pretty fix! And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below! I was furiously angry with them, especially at the way Peter laughed. When Peter laughs it is just as if some one had suddenly tickled him in the stomach; he doubles himself together, twists like a worm, and laughs without making a sound. But Karsten roared at the top of his voice.

"Will you stop your laughing, Karsten? You will betray me making such a noise."

"How will you get down again?"

"Oh, I'll jump down." It was certainly ten or twelve feet to the ground.

"Now I am going in after Carolus; I'll drop him down from here, and you must be sure to catch him."

I groped my way down the half-dark stairway from the loft, stumbled along, in the pitch-black darkness of the shed, over a chopping-block and a heap of shavings, and at last got to the part of the wood-shed where the hens were. I opened the door softly and fumbled with my hand along the roost they were sitting on. But, O dear! O dear! such a squawking and screeching! You haven't the least idea how Madam Land's hens could squawk. It was exactly as if I were murdering them all at once. Outside of the wall I could hear Karsten fairly howling with laughter. I kept fumbling around in the dark, for I wanted to find Carolus. I think I got hold of every single hen; all their beaks were stretched wide, letting out one and the same piercing squawk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below!--_Page 109._]

Then I heard the door of Madam Land's kitchen thrown open, and footsteps across the yard--then Madam Land's voice, "Come with your stick, Land, there are thieves in the hen-house." The door of the wood-shed was opened and Madam Land's maid burst in and saw me. "It is the judge's Inger Johanne, madam," she called.

"Is it that spindleshanks again?" I heard Madam Land say--yes, she really said "spindleshanks"; but to me she only said, "Your c.o.c.k is not here, girl; he has not been here all day--not for two or three days, I believe."

"But he was here this morning."

"Not at all. You didn't see straight. He is not here, I tell you."

I ran home completely at a loss. What in the world had become of Carolus? The next day I searched everywhere. I went around to all the houses in the neighborhood and asked after my c.o.c.k. No, no one had seen him anywhere.

Then all at once a frightful suspicion arose in my mind: Madam Land had cut off Carolus' head!

Oh, what a shame, what a shame!--what a shame for her to do that! How I cried that day! It did no good for them to say at home that perhaps Carolus would come back, and that even if he didn't, it wasn't at all sure that Madam Land had made an end of him; he might easily have just gone astray himself.

No, I didn't believe that for a moment. It was Madam Land who had murdered him, and I thought it was mighty queer of Father that he wouldn't put her on bread and water for twenty days, for she deserved it.

The only thing that consoled me was that I myself never had to see Carolus served up in white sauce in a covered dish on the dinner table.

Never--never in the world--would I have tasted a bit of Carolus!

Well, something always does happen to pets--think of Uncle Ferdinand's monkey.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTMAS MUMMING

It was Christmas Eve when we went mumming, and oh! how glorious the moonlight was! Down in our streets and up over our hills the moon shines clearer than it does anywhere else on the face of the globe, I'll wager.

Ma.s.sa, Mina and I had dressed ourselves up in fancy costumes. "If any one asks where you are from," said Mother, when we were ready to start, "you can safely say, 'From the Land of Fantasy.' You certainly look as if you came from there."

Ma.s.sa had on a light blue dress trimmed with gold-colored cord. It was one of Mother's heirlooms from Great-grandmother Krag, and had a tiny short waist and big puffed sleeves. Ma.s.sa wore also a green velvet hat, and her thick long flaxen hair hung loose down her back.

Mina was dressed in silk from top to toe; an old-time dress of flowered brown silk with a train, a green silk shawl and a big white silk bonnet that came away out beyond her face.

When the others were ready, there was nothing fine left for me, so I had to take a white petticoat, and a dressing sacque, and a big old-fashioned Leghorn hat that Mother had worn when she was young. To decorate myself a little, I carried a beautifully carved _tine_ in one hand and a red parasol in the other. We all wore masks, of course,--big pasteboard masks, which came away down over our chins, with enormous noses and highly colored red cheeks.

Well, off we went and soon stood at the foot of our hill in a most daring mood, ready for all sorts of pranks.

I don't know who proposed that we should go first to Mrs. Berg's, but we all chimed in at once. We crept softly up to her door-step.

Unluckily for us, as it happened, Mrs. Berg has a great iron weight on her street door,--so that it will shut of itself, you know. What the matter was, I can't imagine, but as soon as we had given one knock at the door, down fell that iron weight to the floor with a thundering crash. We were so frightened that we were on the point of running away when Mrs. Berg and her husband came bustling out to the door with a lighted lamp.

"No, thanks," said Mrs. Berg, as soon as she caught sight of us. "I don't want anything to do with such jugglery as this! Out with you, and that quickly!"

"Oh, no, little Marie," said her husband. "You ought to ask the little young ladies in. They are not street children, don't you see?" Mina's magnificent clothes evidently made an impression on him.

Mrs. Berg mumbled something about its being all the same to her what sort of people we were, but Mr. Berg had already opened the door and respectfully asked us to walk in.

It was as hot as a bake-oven in the sitting-room, and so stuffy and thick with tobacco smoke that I thought I should smother behind my mask.

Mr. Berg bowed and bowed and set out three chairs for us in the middle of the room. Now we had planned at home that we would use only P-speech while mumming, for then no one would know us.

"May I ask where these three elegant ladies come from?" asked Mr. Berg.

Ma.s.sa undertook to answer, but she was never very clever at P-speech and she got all mixed up:

"From-prom. Fan-tan-_pan_--pi-ta--sa-si p-p-p----" she stammered, in a hopeless tangle, while Mina and I were ready to burst with laughter.

"Bless us! These must be foreigners from some very distant land,--they speak such a curious language. You must treat them with something, Marie."

Marie didn't appear very willing to treat us to anything, but she went over to a corner cupboard and brought out a few cookies,--pale, baked-to-death "poor man's cookies." They looked poor, indeed! I shuddered before I stuck a piece into my mouth.

To eat with a mask on, when the mouth is no wider than the slit in a savings-bank, has its difficulties, I can tell you. The little I did get in tasted of camphor. Mrs. Berg must have kept her medicines in the same closet with the cakes.

"Perhaps the little ladies would like something more," said Mr. Berg.

"No, thanks--No-po, thanks-panks." And we all three rose to go. We curtsied and curtsied. Mr. Berg bowed and bowed. Mrs. Berg turned the key in the street door after us with a snap, and I heard her say something about "that long-legged young one of the judge's!"

Oh! how we laughed! "Now we will go to Mrs. Pirk's," said I.

"Inger Johanne! Are you crazy? She is worse than Mrs. Berg!"

"That makes it all the more wildly exciting! Come on!"