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Page 63
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy
cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on
the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her
matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself,"
people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she
had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother
she had entered on the joys of a new year.
THE DREAM OF LITTLE TUK
Ah! yes, that was little Tuk: in reality his name was not Tuk, but that was
what he called himself before he could speak plain: he meant it for Charles,
and it is all well enough if one does but know it. He had now to take care of
his little sister Augusta, who was much younger 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 and thought, and all at once it was just as if
someone 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.
* Kjoge, a town in the bay of Kjoge. "To see the Kjoge hens," is an
expression similar to "showing a child London," which is said to be done by
taking his head in both bands, and so lifting him off the ground. At the
invasion of the English in 1807, an encounter of a no very glorious nature
took place between the British troops and the undisciplined Danish militia.
"Kribledy, krabledy--plump!" down fell somebody: it was a wooden bird, the
popinjay used at the shooting-matches at Prastoe. Now he said that there were
just as many inhabitants as he had nails in his body; and he was very proud.
"Thorwaldsen lived almost next door to me.* Plump! Here I lie capitally."
* Prastoe, a still smaller town than Kjoge. Some hundred paces from it lies
the manor-house Ny Soe, where Thorwaldsen, the famed sculptor, generally
sojourned during his stay in Denmark, and where he called many of his immortal
works into existence.
But little Tuk was no longer lying down: all at once he was on horseback. On
he went at full gallop, still galloping on and on. A knight with a gleaming
plume, and most magnificently dressed, held him before him on the horse, and
thus they rode through the wood to the old town of Bordingborg, and that was a
large and very lively town. High towers rose from the castle of the king, and
the brightness of many candles streamed from all the windows; within was dance
and song, and King Waldemar and the young, richly-attired maids of honor
danced together. The morn now came; and as soon as the sun appeared, the whole
town and the king's palace crumbled together, and one tower after the other;
and at last only a single one remained standing where the castle had been
before,* and the town was so small and poor, and the school boys came along
with their books under their arms, and said, "2000 inhabitants!" but that was
not true, for there were not so many.
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