.
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 mass 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