Ib and Little Christine

But sometimes, when he had to go all the way up to Randers he would leave little Christine at the Jeppe-Jenses'.

Ib and Christine got along very well together in every way. They shared their food and they played together; they dug in the ground together; they walked, they crept, they ran together. One day they even climbed up the high ridge, far into the forest; once they found some snipe's eggs, and that was a great event.

Ib had never been at Seishede, where Christine's father lived, nor had he ever sailed down the Gudenaa. But at last this happened; Christine's father invited him to accompany them, and on the evening before the trip he went home with the boatman.

Early next morning the two children were perched high on the big pile of faggots in the boat, eating bread and raspberries, while the boatman and his helper pushed them on with long poles. The current was with them, and they glided swiftly down the stream, through the lakes formed in its course. Sometimes they seemed shut in by woods and water reeds, but there was always just room for them to pass, though the old trees leaned out over the water and the oaks bent down their peeling branches as if they had rolled up their sleeves to show their knotted, naked arms. Ancient elder trees, washed away from the bank by the stream, clung with their roots to the bottom, looking like little wooded islets. Water lilies rocked placidly on the surface of the stream. It was a wonderful trip.

At last they reached the great eel weir, where the water rushed through the floodgates; and to Ib and Christine this was a beautiful sight.

In those days there was no manufacturing plant there, or even a town; there was only the old farmhouse, with a few servants and a few head of cattle. The roar of the water through the sluices and the cry of wild ducks were then the only lively sounds there.

After the firewood had been unloaded, Christine's father bought a big bundle of eels and a slaughtered suckling pig and packed them all in a basket in the stern of the boat.