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IB AND CHRISTINE |
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and barberry bushes. When he had to go as far as Randers, he would bring little Christinp to stay at the Jeppe-Jenses'.
lb and Christine agreed very well in every particular : they dug in the ground together for treasures, and they ran and crept, and one day they ventured together up the high ridge, and a long way into the forest; they found a few snipe's eggs there, and that was a great event for them.
lb had never been on the heath, nor had he ever been on the river. But even this was to happen ; for Christine's father once invited him to go with them, and on the evening before the excursion, lb went home with him.
Next morning early, the two children were sitting high up on the pile of firewood in the boat, eating bread and raspberries. Christine's father and his assistant propelled the boat with staves. They had the current with them, and swiftly they glided down the stream, through the lakes which sometimes seemed shut in by woods and reeds. But there was always room for them to pass, even if the old trees bent quite forward over the water, and the old oaks bent down their bare branches, as if they had turned up their sleeves, and wanted to show their knotty naked arms. Old alder trees, which the stream had washed away from the bank, clung with their roots to the bottom of the stream, and looked like little wooded islands. The water-lilies rocked themselves on the river. It was a splendid excursion ; and at last they came to the great eel-weir, where the water rushed through the flood-gates ; that was something for lb and Christine to see !
In those days there was no manufactory there, nor was there any town : only the old farm-yard, and the stock there was not large ; and the rushing of the water through the weir and the cry of the wild ducks were the only signs of life in Silkeborg. After the firewood had been unloaded, the father of Christine bought a whole bundle of eels and a slaughtered sucking-pig, and all was put into a basket and placed in the stern of the boat. Then they went back again up the stream; but the wind was favourable, and when the sails were hoisted it was as good as if two horses had been harnessed to the boat. |
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