We are staying in the country, a long way out, where the real country is.  
Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind.
 
The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like . The only real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's.
 
Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours.
 
They are regular Copenhageners. They were prepared not to find electric light in the farm-house; but, if they had known that there was no water in the kitchen, God knows they would not have come. They through the clover as though it were and are sorry to find so few cornflowers in the rye. A cow going loose along the roads fills them with a terror which might easily have satisfied a royal tiger.
 
The pearl of the family is Erna.
 
Erna is five years old; her very small face is pale green, with blue eyes and yellow curls. She is richly and dressed in a broad and sash, daintily-embroidered pantalets, short open-work socks and patent-leather shoes. She falls if she but moves a foot, for she is used only to over polished floors or asphalt.
 
I at once perceive that my little boy's eyes have seen a woman.
 
He has seen the woman that comes to us all at one time or another and turns our heads with her silks and her hair and wears her soul in her skirts and our poor hearts under her heel.
 
"Now comes the moment for Dirty," I say to the mother of my little boy.
 
This time it is my little boy's turn to be superior.
 
He knows the business and explains it all to Erna. When he worries the horse, she trembles, impressed with his courage and . When she has a fit of terror at the sight of a hen, he is charmed with her . He knows the way to the smith's, he dares to roll down the high slope, he carries her ridiculous little .
 
Altogether, there is no doubt as to the condition of his heart. And, while Erna's family favour the position—for which may the devil take them!—I must needs wait with resignation like one who knows that love is every man's master.
 
One morning he proposes.
 
He is sitting with his beloved on the lawn. Close to them, her aunt is nursing her chlorosis under a red parasol and with a novel in her bony lap. Up in the balcony above sit I, as , and see everything, myself unseen.
 
"You shall be my sweetheart," says my little boy.
 
"Yes," says Erna.
 
"I have a sweetheart already in Copenhagen," he says, proudly.
 
This communication naturally by no means lowers Erna's suitor in her eyes. But it immediately arouses all Auntie's moral instincts:
 
"If you have a sweetheart, you must be true to her."
 
"Erna shall be my sweetheart."
 
Auntie turns her eyes up to Heaven:
 
"L............