ting in
watching Peter and the dean down there, that I almost felt disappointed
when the dean took Peter by his left ear and dragged him away. The boys
had lately made a little path down the hill and to the back gate of the
dean's garden. It was lucky for Peter that there was some sort of a
beaten track, now that he was being led along it by the ear.

"You can depend upon it that Peter will get a thrashing," said Karsten,
who also felt the excitement of the moment. "But if it were I"--he grew
very earnest--"I'd throw myself on my back and stretch my legs up in
the air and kick so that nobody could come near me. He shouldn't beat
me, no indeed, he'd soon find that out."

It was all over with the celebration. Ezekiel proposed that we should
finish up the refreshments--we divided the cake equally--and then we
clambered down; but we took the path to our garden, not to the dean's.
We only whispered, we didn't speak a single loud word, till we got down.
We got a scolding, a thorough scolding, from the dean, but Mother cried
when she heard what a calamity we had nearly brought about. And I minded
Mother's tears much more than I did the dean's scolding.

Afterwards, when we asked Peter what had happened to him, he didn't
answer, but just smiled feebly.

Yes, that is the way our Seventeenth of May celebration was
interrupted!

[Illustration: The dean took Peter by the left ear and dragged him
away.--_Page 39._]

CHAPTER III

MY FIRST JOURNEY ALONE

Well! I didn't travel entirely alone, either, you must know; for, you
see, I had Karsten with me. But he was only nine years old that summer,
so that it was about the same or even worse than traveling alone. To
make a journey with small children by steamer isn't altogether
comfortable, as any grown person will tell you.

It is curious how tedious everything gets at home in your own town when
you have decided to make a journey. Whatever it might be that the boys
and girls wanted to play--whether it was playing ball in the town
square, or hide-and-go-seek in our cellar, or caravans in the desert up
on the hilltop, or frightening old Miss Einarsen by knocking on her
window (which is generally great fun)--it all seemed stupid and
tiresome beyond description now.

For I was going to travel, going on a journey, and that is the jolliest,
jolliest fun! Alas! for the poor stay-at-homes who couldn't go away but
had to walk about the same old town streets, and smell street d