praise from her mother for being able to provide food for the
family, when she was only a little girl of eight. To encourage the
child, Katrina let her cleanse and fry the fish. Jan ate of it and
declared he had never tasted the like of that fish, which was the
plain truth. For the fish was so bony and dry and burnt that the
little girl herself could scarcely swallow a morsel of it.

But for all that the little girl was just as enthusiastic over her
fishing. She got up every morning at the ionic time that Jan did
and hurried off to the brook, a basket on her arm, and carrying in
a little tin box the worms to bait her hooks. Thus equipped, she
went off to the brook, which came gushing down the rocky steep in
numerous falls and rapids, between which were short stretches of
dark still water and places where the stream ran, clear and
transparent, over a bed of sand and smooth stones.

Think of it! After the first week she had no luck with the fishing.
The worms were gone from all the hooks, but no fish had fastened
there. She shifted her tackle from rapid to still water, from still
water to rippling falls, and she changed her hooks--but with no
better results.

She asked the boys at Börje's and at Eric's if they were not the
ones who got up with the lark and carried off her fish. But a
question like that the boys would not deign to answer. For no boy
would stoop to take fish from the brook, when he had the whole of
Dove Lake to fish in. It was all right for little girls, who were
not allowed to go down to the lake, to run about hunting fish in
the woods, they said.