ust, and
gutters, and stale sea-water in by the wharves.

But I have clean forgotten to tell you where I was going. Mother has a
sister who is married to a minister. They live fifteen or twenty miles
from our town and we go there every summer. But this summer, it had been
decided that Karsten and I should go there alone for the first time.

The afternoon before we were to set out I went down back of our
wood-shed, where all the boys and girls that I go with generally come
every afternoon. It was hot enough to roast you and awfully dry and
dusty; but I took my new umbrella down with me all the same. It wasn't
really silk, but I had wound it and fastened it so tightly together that
it looked just as slender and delicate as a real silk one. I wouldn't
play ball with the rest of them. I just stood and swung my umbrella
about.

"Have you got a new umbrella?" said Karen. "Is it a silk one?" asked
Netta. "You've got eyes in your head," I answered. And so they all
thought it was a silk one. I couldn't play ball with them, I said,
because I had to go in and pack. Now that wasn't true at all, for I knew
well enough that Mother had done all the packing; but it sounded so
off-hand and important. They all teased me to stay down with them for a
while, but no indeed, far from it. "I have too much to do. I start
to-morrow morning early. Good-bye."

"Good-bye and a happy journey," shouted the company.

When I got in the house I was a little sorry that I hadn't stayed out
with the others; for I hadn't a thing to do but go from one room to
another and tighten the shawl-straps for the twentieth time at least. I
thought the afternoon would never come to an end.

Early in the morning, before it was really light, the maid came into the
room and shook me and whispered, "Now you must get up. It's half-past
four o'clock. Get up! The steamer goes at half-past five, you know." Oh,
how dreadfully sleepy I was, but it was great fun all the same. The sun
was not shining into my room yet, but on the church tower it glowed like
a fire. The weather was going to be good. Hurrah! All the doors and
windows of the sleeping-rooms stood wide open. It was so sweet and fresh
and quiet everywhere, fragrant with the smell of the trees and fresh
garden earth outside. We went in to say good-bye to Father and Mother at
their bedside.

"Remember us to everybody and be nice, good children," said Mother.

"Don't lose everything you have with you," said Father.