that the dear God
Himself had been with me and the poor little baby. And that seemed so
wonderful and beautiful and solemn that I could never tell any one, even
Mother, how beautiful it was.

Up in the churchyard there is a tiny grave, the grave of Mother Brita's
grandchild. I know very well just where it is and I often put flowers
upon it in the summer. What I like best to put there are rosebuds,
fresh, lovely, pink rosebuds.

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!

Massa 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