did anything all day but go around shutting doors
to keep Stomach away from her.

All the servants had been instructed to do the same. Sometimes they were
furious with Stomach, but when it had the toothache and sat with its
hand under its little swollen cheek, and rocked sorrowfully back and
forth like a little sick child, their hearts softened towards it and
they forgave all its pranks. But to keep Stomach within bounds grew more
and more difficult. It unfastened the window-catches, promenaded along
the house walls and on the window-sills. Now and then it whisked through
an open window of another house, returning with the most unbelievable
things, water-jugs and pillows, and cologne-bottles which it emptied
out very thoughtfully and slowly over the dahlia bed.

No one must even mention Stomach's name before Aunt Octavia. "The mere
name of that disgusting creature nauseates me," she said. Uncle went
about as if on eggs and grew even more careful about shutting the doors.
But one day, in spite of all the caution, the terrible thing happened;
the monkey got into Aunt Octavia's room. Some one had forgotten to shut
a door; like a flash Stomach darted through, ran noiselessly over the
soft carpet even into the sacred boudoir, gave a spring up onto Aunt
Octavia, who lay with closed eyes on her sofa, and burrowed its whole
little body in under her arm.

Then there was a hullabaloo! Aunt Octavia shrieked at the top of her
lungs, and people rushed in.

"I lie here helpless," said Aunt Octavia; "it could have strangled me.
Ferdinand, what was its object? I ask you, Ferdinand, what was it
thinking of, when it burrowed in under my arm?"

"Perhaps it wanted to warm itself," said Uncle Ferdinand meekly.

"Warm itself!" said Aunt Octavia scornfully. "To bite me in the heart
was what it wanted."

Nothing would satisfy her but that Uncle must take Stomach to the doctor
to be chloroformed, though he would rather have done anything else in
the world!

But Uncle Ferdinand's monkey really hasn't the least thing to do with
the chickens from Vegassheien that Karsten and I wanted, and that I
began to tell about.

Hurrah! Mother would buy the four chickens, but only on condition that
Karsten and I should take care of them. Would we do this?

Why, of course; it would be only fun. I never imagined then all the
bother and rumpus that would come of it.

Up in our old barn, that has stood for many years unused, there is a
room partitio