Tales of Two Countries | Page 9

lapwing flew about flapping her wings. The
spring had overtaken her so suddenly that she had not had time to find a
proper place for her nest. She had laid her eggs right in the middle of a
flat-topped mound. It was all wrong, she knew that quite well; but it
could not be helped now.
The lark laughed at it all; but the sparrows were all in a hurry-scurry.
They were not nearly ready. Some had not even a nest; others had laid
an egg or two; but the majority had sat on the cow-house roof, week
out, week in, chattering about the almanac.
Now they were in such a fidget they did not know where to begin. They
held a meeting in a great rose-bush, beside the Pastor's garden-fence,
all cackling and screaming together. The cock-sparrows ruffled
themselves up, so that all their feathers stood straight on end; and then
they perked their tails up slanting in the air, so that they looked like
little gray balls with a pin stuck in them. So they trundled down the
branches and ricochetted away over the meadow.
All of a sudden, two dashed against each other. The rest rushed up, and
all the little balls wound themselves into one big one. It rolled forward
from under the bush, rose with a great hubbub a little way into the air,

then fell in one mass to the earth and went to pieces. And then, without
uttering a sound, each of the little balls suddenly went his way, and a
moment afterwards there was not a sparrow to be seen about the whole
Parsonage.
Little Ansgarius had watched the battle of the sparrows with lively
interest. For, in his eyes, it was a great engagement, with charges and
cavalry skirmishes. He was reading Universal History and the History
of Norway with his father, and therefore everything that happened
about the house assumed a martial aspect in one way or another. When
the cows came home in the evening, they ware great columns of
infantry advancing; the hens were the volunteer forces, and the cock
was Burgomaster Nansen.
Ansgarius was a clever boy, who had all his dates at his fingers' ends;
but he had no idea of the meaning of time. Accordingly, he jumbled
together Napoleon and Eric Blood-Axe and Tiberius; and on the ships
which he saw sailing by in the offing he imagined Tordenskiold doing
battle, now with Vikings, and now with the Spanish Armada.
In a secret den behind the summer-house he kept a red broom-stick,
which was called Bucephalus. It was his delight to prance about the
garden with his steed between his legs, and a flowerstick in his hand.
A little way from the garden there was a hillock with a few small trees
upon it. Here he could lie in ambush and keep watch far and wide over
the heathery levels and the open sea.
He never failed to descry one danger or another drawing near; either
suspicious-looking boats on the beach, or great squadrons of cavalry
advancing so cunningly that they looked like nothing but a single horse.
But Ansgarius saw through their stealthy tactics; he wheeled
Bucephalus about, tore down from the mound and through the garden,
and dashed at a gallop into the farm-yard. The hens shrieked as if their
last hour had come, and Burgomaster Nansen flew right against the
Pastor's study window.
The Pastor hurried to the window, and just caught sight of Bucephalus's
tail as the hero dashed round the corner of the cow-house, where he
proposed to place himself in a posture of defence.
"That boy is deplorably wild," thought the Pastor. He did not at all like
all these martial proclivities. Ansgarius was to be a man of peace, like
the Pastor himself; and it was a positive pain to him to see how easily

the boy learned and assimilated everything that had to do with war and
fighting.
The Pastor would try now and then to depict the peaceful life of the
ancients or of foreign nations. But he made little impression. Ansgarius
pinned his faith to what he found in his book; and there it was nothing
but war after war. The people were all soldiers, the heroes waded in
blood; and it was fruitless labor for the Pastor to try to awaken the boy
to any sympathy with those whose blood they waded in.
It would occur to the Pastor now and again that it might, perhaps, have
been better to have filled the young head from the first with more
peaceful ideas and images than the wars of rapacious monarchs or the
murders and massacres of our forefathers. But then he remembered that
he himself had gone through the same course in his boyhood, so that