lled--people who came under both of these heads, and people who came
under neither of these heads. The meeting now in question was a
children's party, where there was childish talk; and children
generally speak like parrots.

There was one little girl so excessively proud. She had been flattered
into her foolish pride by the servants, not by her parents--they were
too sensible to have done that. Her father was _Kammerjunker_[6] and
she thought this was monstrously grand.

[Footnote 6: A title at court.]

"I am a court child," she said.

She might as well have been a cellar child, as far as she was herself
concerned; and she informed the other children that she was "born"
(_well born_, she meant); that when people were not "born," they could
never be anybody; and that, however much they might read, however
clever and industrious they might be, if they were not "born" they
could never become great.

"And those whose names end in '_sen_,'" she continued, "are all low
people, and can never be of any consequence in the world. Ladies and
gentlemen would put their hands on their sides, and keep them at a
distance, these 'sen--sens!'" And she threw herself into the attitude
she had described, and stuck her pretty little arms akimbo, to show
how people of her grade would carry themselves in the presence of such
common creatures. She really looked very pretty.

But the merchant's little daughter became extremely angry. Her father
was called "Madsen," and that name, she knew, ended in "sen;" so she
said, as proudly as she could,--

"But my father can buy hundreds of rix dollars' worth of sugar-plums,
and think nothing of it. Can your father do that?"

"That's all very well," said the little daughter of a popular
journalist; "but my father can put both of your fathers and all
'fathers' into the newspaper. Every one is afraid of him, my mother
says; for it is my father who rules everything through the
newspaper." And the little girl tossed her head and strutted about as
if she thought herself a princess.

But on the outside of the half-open door stood a poor little boy
peeping in. It was, of course, out of the question that so poor a
child should enter the drawing-room; but he had been turning the spit
for the cook, and he had obtained permission to look in behind the
door at the splendidly dressed children who were amusing themselves,
and that was a treat to him.

He would have liked to have been one of them, he though