Humph!
_Lose_--Father seemed to forget that I was nearly grown up now.

As we went down the hill, the stones under the elm-trees were still all
moist with dew. Oh! how quiet it was out-of-doors! Suddenly away down
in the town a cock crew. Everything seemed very strange.

Karsten and I ran ahead and Ingeborg, the maid, came struggling after us
with our big green _tine_.[1] Suddenly a desperate anxiety came over me.
Suppose the steamboat should go off and leave us! Then how we ran! We
left Ingeborg and the _tine_ and everything else behind. When we turned
round the corner into the market square, the sun streamed straight into
our eyes and there by the custom-house wharf lay the steamboat, with
steam up and sacks of meal being put on board. Karsten and I dashed
across the square. Pshaw! we were in plenty of time. There wasn't a
single passenger aboard yet. It is a little steamboat, you know, that
only goes from our town over to Arendal. I got Karsten settled on a
seat, kneeling and facing the water, and then established myself in a
jaunty, free and easy manner by the railing as if I were accustomed to
travel. Ole Bugta and Kristen Snau and all the other clodhoppers on the
wharf should never imagine that this was the first time I had been
aboard a steamboat.

[Footnote 1: Tine (pronounced tee'ne) a covered wooden box with handle
on top.]

Soon that skin-and-bone Andersen, the storekeeper, got on the boat, and
then came little Magnus, the telegraph messenger, jogging along. Magnus
is really a dwarf. He is forty years old and doesn't reach any higher
than my shoulder; but he has an exceedingly large old face. He clambered
up on a bench. He has such short legs that when he sits down his legs
stick straight out into the air, just as tiny little children's do when
they sit down. Then came Mrs. Tellefsen, in a French shawl, and
dreadfully warm and worried. "When the whistle blew the first time, I
was still in my night-clothes," she confided to me.

The whistle blew the third time. I smiled condescendingly down to
Ingeborg, our maid, who stood upon the wharf. I wouldn't for a good deal
be in her shoes and have to turn back and go home again now. Far up the
street appeared a man and woman shouting and calling for us to wait for
them. "Hurry up! Hurry up!" shouted the captain. That was easier said
than done; for when they came nearer I saw that it was that queer Mr.
Singdahlsen and his mother. Mr. Singdahlsen is not right in h