for breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the smallest of silver
spoons, when the door opened with a bang and a small figure tumbled into
my room.

It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket
and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felt
hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim,
and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair sticking
through it, gave him the appearance of a damaged mushroom.

Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his face,
which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue eyes--as blue as
the bluest sea--he took no notice of my presence, but tossed a
somersault in the middle of the floor, screwed his legs over the back of
a chair, vaulted over a table and finally stood on his hands with his
legs against the wall opposite to my bed, and his inverted countenance
close to the carpet.

In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of remaining as
long as possible, while his face grew very red, we held our first
conversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet as a mouse, but now
I said:

"Little boy, what's your name?"

"Mart," was the answer.

"Where do you come from?"

"Spitzbergen."