骑鹅历险记:THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF NILS

CHAPTER 1 THE BOY

CHAPTER 2 AKKA FROM KEBNEKAISE

CHAPTER 3 THE WONDERFUL JOURNEY OF NILS

CHAPTER 4 GLIMMINGE CASTLE

CHAPTER 5 THE GREAT CRANE DANCE ON KULLABERG

CHAPTER 6 IN RAINY WEATHER

CHAPTER 7 THE STAIRWAY WITH THE THREE STEPS

CHAPTER 8 BY RONNEBY RIVER

CHAPTER 9 KARLSKRONA

CHAPTER 10 THE TRIP TO ÖLAND

CHAPTER 11 ÖLAND’S SOUTHERN POINT

CHAPTER 12 THE BIG BUTTERFLY

CHAPTER 13 LITTLE KARL’S ISLAND

CHAPTER 14 TWO CITIES

CHAPTER 15 THE LEGEND OF SMÅLAND

CHAPTER 16 THE CROWS

CHAPTER 17 THE OLD PEASANT WOMAN

CHAPTER 18 FROM TABERG TO HUSKVARNA

CHAPTER 19 THE BIG BIRD LAKE

CHAPTER 20 ULVÅSA-LADY

THE BOY

THE ELF

Sunday, March twentieth

Once there was a boy.He was—let us say—something like fourteen years old, long and loose-jointed andtowheaded. He wasn’t good for much, that boy. His chief delight was to eat andsleep, and after that—he liked best to make mischief.

It was a Sundaymorning and the boy’s parents were getting ready to go to church. The boy saton the edge of the table, in his shirt sleeves, and thought how lucky it wasthat both father and mother were going away, and the coast would be clear for acouple of hours. “Good! Now I can take down pop’s gun and fire off a shot, withoutanybody’s meddling interference,” he said to himself.

But it was almost asif father should have guessed the boy’s thoughts, for just as he was on thethreshold—ready to start—he stopped short, and turned toward the boy. “Sinceyou won’t come to church with mother and me,” he said, “the least you can do,is to read the service at home. Will you promise to do so?” “Yes,” said theboy, “that I can do easy enough.” And he thought, of course, that he wouldn’tread any more than he felt like reading.

The boy thought thatnever had he seen his mother so persistent. In a second she was over by theshelf near the fireplace, and took down Luther’s Commentary and laid it onthe table in front of the window—opened at the service for the day. She alsoopened the New Testament, and placed it beside the Commentary. Finally,she drew up the big arm-chair, which was bought at the parish auction the yearbefore, and which, as a rule, no one but father was permitted to occupy.

The boy sat thinkingthat his mother was giving herself altogether too much trouble with this spreadfor he had no intention of reading more than a page or so. But now, for the secondtime, it was almost as if his father were able to see right through him. Hewalked up to the boy, and said in a severe tone, “Now, remember, that you areto read carefully! For when we come back, I shall question you thoroughly, andif you have skipped a single page, it will not go well with you.”

“The service isfourteen and a half pages long,” said his mother, just as if she wanted to heapup the measure of his misfortune. “You’ll have to sit down and begin thereading at once if you expect to get through with it.”

With that theydeparted. And as the boy stood in the doorway watching them, he thought that hehad been caught in a trap. “There they go congratulating themselves, I suppose,in the belief that they’ve hit upon something so good that I’ll be forced tosit and hang over the sermon the whole time that they are away,” thought he.

But his father andmother were certainly not congratulating themselves upon anything of the sort,but, on the contrary, they were very much distressed. They were poor farmers,and their place was not much bigger than a garden-plot. When they first movedthere, the place couldn’t feed more than one pig and a pair of chickens, butthey were uncommonly industrious and capable folk—and now they had both cowsand geese. Things had turned out very well for them, and they would have goneto church that beautiful morning—satisfied and happy—if they hadn’t had their sonto think of. Father complained that he was dull and lazy; he had not cared tolearn anything at school, and he was such an all-round good-for-nothing that hecould barely be made to tend geese. Mother did not deny that this was true, butshe was most distressed because he was wild and bad; cruel to animals, andillwilled toward human beings. “May God soften hishard heart, and give him a better disposition!” said the mother, “or else he will be a misfortune,both to himself and to us.”