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Page 48
The Sunday following, the little boy took something, and wrapped it up in a
piece of paper, went downstairs, and stood in the doorway; and when the man
who went on errands came past, he said to him--
"I say, master! will you give this to the old man over the way from me? I have
two pewter soldiers--this is one of them, and he shall have it, for I know he
is so very, very lonely."
And the old errand man looked quite pleased, nodded, and took the pewter
soldier over to the old house. Afterwards there came a message; it was to ask
if the little boy himself had not a wish to come over and pay a visit; and so
he got permission of his parents, and then went over to the old house.
And the brass balls on the iron railings shone much brighter than ever; one
would have thought they were polished on account of the visit; and it was as
if the carved-out trumpeters--for there were trumpeters, who stood in tulips,
carved out on the door--blew with all their might, their cheeks appeared so
much rounder than before. Yes, they blew--"Trateratra! The little boy comes!
Trateratra!"--and then the door opened.
The whole passage was hung with portraits of knights in armor, and ladies in
silken gowns; and the armor rattled, and the silken gowns rustled! And then
there was a flight of stairs which went a good way upwards, and a little way
downwards, and then one came on a balcony which was in a very dilapidated
state, sure enough, with large holes and long crevices, but grass grew there
and leaves out of them altogether, for the whole balcony outside, the yard,
and the walls, were overgrown with so much green stuff, that it looked like a
garden; only a balcony. Here stood old flower-pots with faces and asses' ears,
and the flowers grew just as they liked. One of the pots was quite overrun on
all sides with pinks, that is to say, with the green part; shoot stood by
shoot, and it said quite distinctly, "The air has cherished me, the sun has
kissed me, and promised me a little flower on Sunday! a little flower on
Sunday!"
And then they entered a chamber where the walls were covered with hog's
leather, and printed with gold flowers.
"The gilding decays,
But hog's leather stays!"
said the walls.
And there stood easy-chairs, with such high backs, and so carved out, and with
arms on both sides. "Sit down! sit down!" said they. "Ugh! how I creak; now I
shall certainly get the gout, like the old clothespress, ugh!"
And then the little boy came into the room where the projecting windows were,
and where the old man sat.
"I thank you for the pewter soldier, my little friend!" said the old man. "And
I thank you because you come over to me."
"Thankee! thankee!" or "cranky! cranky!" sounded from all the furniture; there
was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look
at the little boy.
In the middle of the wall hung a picture representing a beautiful lady, so
young, so glad, but dressed quite as in former times, with clothes that stood
quite stiff, and with powder in her hair; she neither said "thankee, thankee!"
nor "cranky, cranky!" but looked with her mild eyes at the little boy, who
directly asked the old man, "Where did you get her?"
"Yonder, at the broker's," said the old man, "where there are so many pictures
hanging. No one knows or cares about them, for they are all of them buried;
but I knew her in by-gone days, and now she has been dead and gone these fifty
years!"
Under the picture, in a glazed frame, there hung a bouquet of withered
flowers; they were almost fifty years old; they looked so very old!
The pendulum of the great clock went to and fro, and the hands turned, and
everything in the room became still older; but they did not observe it.
"They say at home," said the little boy, "that you are so very, very lonely!"
"Oh!" said he. "The old thoughts, with what they may bring with them, come and
visit me, and now you also come! I am very well off!"
Then he took a book with pictures in it down from the shelf; there were
whole long processions and pageants, with the strangest characters, which one
never sees now-a-days; soldiers like the knave of clubs, and citizens with
waving flags: the tailors had theirs, with a pair of shears held by two
lions--and the shoemakers theirs, without boots, but with an eagle that had
two heads, for the shoemakers must have everything so that they can say, it is
a pair! Yes, that was a picture book!
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