"IT'S ME"
They had chatted so long about the lasses down in the valley; and what afine time they had of it there, that Gygra's[1] daughter grew sick andtired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side. Shewas bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.
"Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, andtidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an ironrake," said the dwellers in the mountains.
So Gygra's daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till thefoss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to theground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.
* * * * *
One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into thegeneral-dealer's kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.
"You must be cook, then," said Madame[2]. It seemed to her that thewench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make nobones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they tookher on.
She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first timeshe carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against thekitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times thecarpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for sheburst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.
When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled uphiggledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves andtables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they neverseemed to grow less.
Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.
When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, andscrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels wouldno doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn't broken to bitsbeneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it oughtto be done, she only gasped and gaped.
Such sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugsand dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.
And then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.
So her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner theywere well quit of her the better.
Out into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quitered in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again.He would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only standwith her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.
Now when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen benchand doing nothing but gape through the window-panes at his boats, whichlay down by the bridge laden with train-oil, he was downright furious."Pack yourself off this instant!" said he.
But Toad showed her teeth, and grinned and blinked up at him, and saidthat as master himself had come into the kitchen, he should see that shedid not eat his bread for nothing.
Then she slouched down to the boats, and snorted back at him with herarm before her face. Before any one could guess what she was after, shehad one of the heavy hogsheads of train-oil on her back.
And back she came through the kitchen door, all smirking and smiling,and begged father to be so good as to tell her where she was to put it.
He simply stood and gaped at her. Such a thing he had never seen before.
And hogshead after hogshead she carried from the boat right up into theshop.
The general dealer laughed till he quite gasped for breath, and slappedhis thighs so far as his big belly would let him reach them.
Nor was he sparing of compliments.
And into the dwelling-room he rushed almost as quickly as he had rushedout of it.
"Mother has no idea what a capital wench she has got," said he.
But, ever after that, she put her hand to nothing, nay, not so much asto drive a wooden peg into the wall, and if some one else hadn't warmedup a thing or two now and then, there would have been very little to eatin the house. It was as much as they could do to get her away from thefireside at meal times.
When her mistress complained about it, her master said that she oughtn'tto expect too much. The lass surely required a little rest now andagain, after carrying such drayman's loads as she did.
But Toad always had an ogle and a grin ready at such times as thegeneral dealer came through the door from the shop. Then she grew quickand lively enough, and went on all sorts of errands, whether it was withthe bucket to the spring or to the storehouse for bread. And when shesaw that her mistress was out of the way, she took it upon herself to doexactly as she liked, both in this and in that.
No sooner was the pot hung on the pot-hook, than she would slip awaywith a big saucer and fetch sirup from the shop. And she would flouncedown before the porridge dish and gobble to her heart's content. If anyof her fellow-servants claimed an equal share, she would simply answer,"It's me!"
They dared not rebel. Since the day she had taken up the hogsheads oftrain-oil, they knew that she had master on her side.
But her mistress was not slow to mark the diminishing both of thesirup-pot and the powdered sugar, and she perceived also in whichdirection the gingerbreads and all the butter and bacon went. For outthe wench would come, munching rye cakes and licking the sirup from herfingers.
And she grew as round and thick and fat as if she would burst.
When her mistress took away and kept the key, Toad would poke her headinto the parlour door, and ogle and writhe at the general dealer, andask if there was anything to carry up to the store-room. And then hewould go to the window and watch her as she lifted and carried kegs offish and casks of sugar and sacks of meal.
He laughed till he coughed again, and, wiping the sweat from hisforehead, would bellow all over the place--"Can any one of my labouringmen carry loads like Toad can?"
And when her master came home, dripping wet and benumbed with cold, fromhis first autumn voyage, it was Toad who was first and foremost to meethim and unbutton his oil-skin jacket for him, and undo his sou'wester,and help him off with his long sea-boots.
He shivered and shook; but she was not slow to wring out his wetstockings for him, and fetch no end of birch bark and huge logs. Thenshe made up a regular bonfire in the fireplace, and placed him cosily inthe chimney corner.
Madame came to give her husband some warm ale posset; but she was soannoyed to see the wench whisking and bustling about him, that she wentup into the parlour and howled with rage.
Early in the morning, the general dealer bawled and shouted downstairsfor his long worsted stockings. They could hear that he was peevish andcross because he had to put on his sea-jacket and cramped water-boots,and go out again into the foul weather.
He tore open the kitchen door, and asked them furiously how much longerthey were going to keep him waiting.
But now his mouth grew as wide open as the door-way he stood in, and hisface quite lit up with satisfaction.
Round about the walls, and in the warmth of the chimney corner, hung hissou'wester, and his oil-skin jacket, and his trousers, and every blessedbit of clothes he was to put on, as dry as tinder. And in the middle ofthe kitchen bench he saw his large sea-boots standing there, so snug,and so nicely greased, that the grease ran right down the shafts andover the straps.
Such a servant for looking after him and taking care of him he had notbelieved it possible to get for love or money, cried the general dealer.
But now his wife could contain herself no longer. She showed him thatthe clothes were both scorched and burned, and that the whole of oneside of the oilskin jacket was crumpled up with heat, and cracked if onepulled it never so lightly.
And in she dragged the big butter-keg, that he might see for himself howthe wench had stuck both his boots in it and used it to grease themwith.
But the general dealer stood there quite dumfoundered, and glanced nowat the boots and now at the butter-tub.
He snapped his fingers, and his face twitched, and then h
e began to wipeaway his tears.
He hastened to go in that they might not see that he was weeping.
"Mother does not know how kindly the wench has meant it all," he sobbed.Good heavens! what if she _had_ used butter for his boots, if she hadonly _meant_ well. Never would he turn such a lass out of the house.
Then the wife gave it up altogether, and let the big kitchen wench ruleas best she might. And it was not very long either before Toad let thekey of the store-room remain in the door from morn till eve. When anyone bawled out to her, "Who's inside there?" she would simply answer,"It's me!"
And she didn't budge from the gingerbread-box, as she sat there and ate,even for Madame herself. But she always had an eye upon her master thegeneral dealer.
But he only jested with her, and asked her if she got food enough, andsaid that he was afraid he would, one day, find her starved to death.
Towards Christmas time, when folks were making ready to go a-fishing,Madame was busy betimes and bustled about as usual, and got the greatcaldron taken down into the working-room for washing and wool-stamping.
The cooks hired for the occasion rolled out the _lefser_,[3] and bakedand frizzled on the flat oven-pans. And they brought in herring kegsfrom the shop, and meal and meat, both cured and fresh, and weighed andmeasured, and laid in stores of provisions.
But then it seemed to Toad as if she hadn't a moment's peace for pryinginto pots and pans. Her mistress was going backwards and forwardscontinually, between store-room and pantry, after meal, or sugar, orbutter, or sirup for the _lefser_. The store-room door was ajar for herall day long.
So at last Toad grew downright wild. She was determined to put an end toall this racket. So she took it upon her to well smear the threshold ofthe store-room with green soap.
Next morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with butterand a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the openingbetween the stairs and the store-house door.
There she lay till Toad dragged her up.
She carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that itwas heard all over the depot. Madame had been regularly worrying herselfto death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul hadfallen and broken her leg.
But the one who cried the most, and didn't know what to do with himselfwhen he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the generaldealer.
None knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.
And so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensedthe stores and made provision for the household.
She drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house--theywere only eating her master out of house and home, she said.
The _lefser_ were laid together without any sirup between them, and shegave out fat instead of butter. She distributed it herself, and packedit up in their _Nistebommers_[4].
Never had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposedof so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.
And he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into thestore-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how thecured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters inrows and rows.
"So long as things went on as they were going now," said he, "she shouldhave the control of the household like mother herself," for his wife wasnow bedridden in her room upstairs.
And at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finelythat her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoonsand gnaw bones.
But such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such _lefser_ filledwith both sirup and butter, and such _moelje_[5] and splendid fare forthe guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealerhad never seen before.
Then the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into theshop they both went together.
She might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefsand other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if shewere mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silkas much as she liked. There was nothing that she might not have.
But when the bailiff and the sexton sat at cards, and Toad came in tolay the table-cloth, they were like to have rolled off their chairs.Such a sight they had never seen before. Toad had rigged herself up withall manner of parti-coloured 'kerchiefs, and trimmed her hairy poll withblue and yellow and green ribbons till it looked like a cart-horse'stail. But they said nothing, for the sake of the general dealer, whothought she looked so smart, and was calling her in continually.
And they were forced to confess that the wench spared neither meat norale nor brandy. And on the third evening, when they got so drunk thatthey lay there like logs, she carried them off to bed as if they weresucking babes.
And so it went on, with feasting and entertaining, right up to thetwentieth day after Christmas Day, and beyond it.
And that wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and wheneverthey didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself rightin the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery toattract notice, and say, "It's me!"
And when the guests left the house they must needs admit that thegeneral dealer was right when he said that such serving-maids were notto be picked up every day.
But those folks who went a-fishing for the general dealer, and had theirprovisions put up for them beforehand, were not slow to mark that Toadhad the control of the shop and stores likewise.
So it happened as might only have been expected. Their provisions ranshort, and they had to return home just as the cod was biting best,while all the other fishermen sailed further out and made first-ratehauls.
The general dealer was like to have had apoplexy on the day that he sawhis boats lying empty by the bridge in the height of the fishing season.His men came up in a body to the shop, headed by their eldest foreman,and laid a complaint before him.
The food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said,couldn't be called human food at all. The _lefser_ were so hard, theysaid, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat onthem, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shouldersof mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one scrapedagainst the bare bone.
Up into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.
But as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that itwas as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavyexpenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, withouthaving to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and freshbutter and _lefser_ and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no needto starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses,said she.
And then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own _lefser_, whichshe had filled with butter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. Andhe tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners ofhis mouth. Such good greasy _lefser_ he had never tasted before.
Then the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.
He was as red as a turkey-cock; and out of the shop-door they went headfirst--some three yards and some four, according as he got a good gripof them; and old Thore, who had steered the big _femboering_, both forhim and his father, was discharged.
But Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on thethreshing-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer wasshrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood thereand peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, whohadn't been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out ofher bedroom window.
She took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she sawtheir old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his capin his hand as if he were deranged.
But she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, forthere stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platterof _moelje_ in her hand, a
nd shook her fist after him.
Then Kjel was like to have wept too.... That stout Toad should notgrease herself shiny with _moelje_ fat much longer in _their_ house, orhe'd know the reason why, thought Kjel.
And from thenceforth Kjel kept a strict watch upon her. There were lotsof things going on that he couldn't make out at all.
Towards spring-time, when they put the mast into the large new yachtwhich was to take the first trading voyage to Bergen, the general dealerwas so glad that he was running up and down from the bridge to the housethe whole day. He had never imagined that the yacht would have turnedout so fine and stately.
And when they had the tackle and the shrouds all ready, and werehoisting away at the yards, he spun round on his heel and snapped hisfingers--"That lass Toad should go with him to Bergen," said he.... "Shehad never seen the town, poor thing! while as for mother, she had beenthere three times already."
But it seemed to Kjel that he saw more in this than other people saw.
As for Toad, when she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularlyturned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her inthe whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn't ransack to findthe finery and frippery that glittered most.
And in the evening, when the others had lain them down to rest, shestrolled over to the storehouse with a light.
But Kjel, who was a very light sleeper, was up and after her in aninstant, and peeped at her through the crack in the door.
There he saw her cutting up the victuals and putting one tit-bit asideafter the other, _lefser_ and sweet-cakes and bacon and collared-beef,into the large chest which she had hidden behind the herring barrels.And on this, the last evening before their departure for Bergen, she hadfilled her provision-chest so full that she had to sit upon it, with allher huge heavy weight, to press it down.
But the lock wouldn't catch; she had filled the chest too full, so shehad to get up and stamp backwards on the lid till it regularlythundered; and sure enough she forced it down at last.
But the heel she stamped down upon it with was much more like the hoofof a horse than the foot of a human being, thought Kjel.
Then she carried the chest to the waggon that it might be smuggled onboard without any one seeing it. After that she went into the stable andunloosed the horse. But then there was a pretty to do in the stable!
The horse knew that there was witchcraft afoot, and would not allowitself to be inspanned. Toad dragged and dragged, and the horse shiedand kicked. At last the wench used her back-legs, just as a mare does.
Such sport as that no human eye should have ever seen.
And straight off to the general dealer rushed Kjel, and got him to comeout with him.
There in the moonshine that wench, Toad, and the dun horse were flingingout at each other as if for a wager, so that their hoofs dashed againstthe framework of the stable-door. Their long legs flew in turn over thestable walls, and the sparks scattered about in showers.
Then the general dealer grew all of a shiver and staggered about. Bloodflew from his nose, and Kjel had to help him into the kitchen and duckhis head in the sink. That night the general dealer didn't go to bed atall; but he walked up and down and stamped till the floor regularlythundered. And it was scarcely light next morning when he sent off Kjelwith a dollar in his fist to old Thore the foreman. And he sent in thesame way to all the boat people down by the shore.
Thore was told to put on his holiday clothes and get out the_femboering_, and row Madame herself to the yacht with the last lading.She should go with him to Bergen. There she should get both a silk dressand a shawl, and a gold watch and chain into the bargain, and engage aBergen serving-wench.
It was still early in the day when the yacht lay in the bay with herflag flying, all ready to start.
When they had hoisted the sail, that wench Toad, heavy and stout, came,puffing and blowing, across the bridge, in full parade, with rings onall her sprawling fingers, and her body covered with all the yellow andgreen and red ribbons she could possibly find room for on her ampleperson.
There she stood waiting for them to come back in the stately _femboering_and take her on board.
And when they began to raise the anchor, and the general dealer appearedon deck with his large meerschaum pipe and his telescope, she smirkedand minced and wriggled and twisted, and cried aloud, "It's me!"
She thought he wanted to peep at her splendour through his spyglass.
All at once she saw Madame standing by his side in full travellingcostume, and understood that they were going away without her.
Then she kicked out so that the planks of the bridge groaned and creakedbeneath her. Eight into the sea she plunged, and caught hold of theanchor, and tugged and held the ship back till the cable broke.
Then head over heels she went with both her hoofs in the air.
But the yacht glided away under full sail, and the general dealer stoodthere and laughed till he nearly fell overboard.
* * * * *
[1] A giantess, the wife of the mountain gnome, who rules in theDovrefeld.
[2] _I.e.,_ the general dealer's wife.
[3] Thin cakes that can be doubled in two and eaten with sirup.
[4] Boxes containing provisions for voyages or journeys.
[5] Flat cakes broken up with butter.
* * * * *
THE END.
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