Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind.

 

The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like larks¹. The only real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's.

 

Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours.

 

They are regular Copenhageners. They were prepared not to find electric light in the farm-house; but, if they had known that there was no water in the kitchen, God knows they would not have come. They trudge² through the clover as though it were mire³ and are sorry to find so few cornflowers in the rye. A cow going loose along the roads fills them with a terror which might easily have satisfied a royal tiger.

 

The pearl of the family is Erna.

 

Erna is five years old; her very small face is pale green, with watery⁴ blue eyes and yellow curls. She is richly and gaily⁵ dressed in a broad and slovenly⁶ sash, daintily-embroidered pantalets, short open-work socks and patent-leather shoes. She falls if she but moves a foot, for she is used only to gliding⁷ over polished floors or asphalt.

 

I at once perceive that my little boy's eyes have seen a woman.

 

He has seen the woman that comes to us all at one time or another and turns our heads with her

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