things, no bigger than a small-type comma, yet they could jump several
thousand times their own length. Think of the strength of such a body in
proportion to its size! There is a tiny spider here with its hinder part
like a pale yellow pearl. And the pearl is so heavy that the creature has
to clamber up a stalk of grass back downwards. When it comes upon an
obstacle the pearl cannot pass, it simply drops straight down and starts
to climb another. Now, a little pearl-spider like that is not just a
spider and no more. If I hold out a leaf towards it to help it to its
footing on a floor, it fumbles about for a while on the leaf, and thinks
to itself: "H'm, something wrong about this!" and backs away again,
refusing to be in any way entrapped on to a floor....

Some one calls me by name from down in the wood. It is Harald; he has
started a Sunday school with me. He gave me a lesson out of Pontoppidan to
learn, and now I'm to be heard. It is touching to be taught religion now
as I should have taught it myself when I was a child.




IX


The well was finished, the trench was dug, and the man had come to lay the
pipes. He chose Grindhusen to help him with the work, and I was set to
cutting a way for the pipes up from the cellar through the two floors of
the house.

Fruen came down one day when I was busy in the cellar. I called out to her
to mind the hole in the floor; but she took it very calmly.