less
than himself, and he was, besides, to learn his lesson at the same
time; but these two things would not do together at all. There sat the
poor little fellow with his sister on his lap, and he sang to her all
the songs he knew; and he glanced the while from time to time into the
geography-book that lay open before him. By the next morning he was to
have learnt all the towns in Zealand by heart, and to know about them
all that is possible to be known.

His mother now came home, for she had been out, and took little
Augusta on her arm. Tuk ran quickly to the window, and read so eagerly
that he pretty nearly read his eyes out; for it got darker and darker,
but his mother had no money to buy a candle.

"There goes the old washerwoman over the way," said his mother, as she
looked out of the window. "The poor woman can hardly drag herself
along, and she must now drag the pail home from the fountain: be a
good boy, Tukey, and run across and help the old woman, won't you?"

So Tuk ran over quickly and helped her; but when he came back again
into the room it was quite dark, and as to a light, there was no
thought of such a thing. He was now to go to bed; that was an old
turn-up bedstead; in it he lay and thought about his geography lesson,
and of Zealand, and of all that his master had told him. He ought, to
be sure, to have read over his lesson again, but that, you know, he
could not do. He therefore put his geography-book under his pillow,
because he had heard that was a very good thing to do when one wants
to learn one's lesson; but one cannot, however, rely upon it entirely.
Well there he lay, and thought an thought, and all at once it was just
as if some one kissed his eyes and mouth: he slept, and yet he did not
sleep; it was as though the old washerwoman gazed on him with her mild
eyes and said, "It were a great sin if you were not to know your
lesson tomorrow morning. You have aided me, I therefore will now help
you; and the loving God will do so at all times." And all of a sudden
the book under Tuk's pillow began scraping and scratching.

"Kickery-ki! kluk! kluk! kluk!"--that was an old hen who came creeping
along, and she was from Kjoge. I am a Kjoger hen,"* said she, and then
she related how many inhabitants there were there, and about the
battle that had taken place, and which, after all, was hardly worth
talking about.

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* Kjoge a town in the bay of Kjoge "To see the Kjoge hens," is an
expression