White clouds, summer clouds.
But the finest thing of all was the long bridge and the lake and all the steamboats that blew their whistles when they were still far off so that the bridge should open and let them through. Martin soon taught himself to know them all: the Fyris, the Garibaldi, the Bragë, which was never in a hurry; the lovely blue Tynnelsö, and the brown Enköping, which was called the Coffeepot, because it sputtered like boiling coffee. Each boat had for him its particular expression, so that he could distinguish them one from another a long way off. They helped him to keep account of the time too. When the Tynnelsö was passing through the bridge, it was time to go home and have breakfast; and when the Runa blew with its hoarse throat, the Bragë was not far away, and it was in the Bragë that papa came from the city. There were towboats too with their long lines of barges; these barges often got stuck in the gap of the bridge, and nothing in the world was so much fun as to hear the bargemen swear. But on days when the lake was green, with white foam, and the waves plashed high up over the bridge, no steamboats could vie with the coasting sloops for first place in Martin’s heart. In every skipper he saw a hero who defied wind and wave to reach some strange, unknown port, for it never occurred to him to think that they only sailed to Stockholm to sell the wood, hay, or pottery they had on board. These cargoes, however, did not quite please him, for he could not help their suggesting against his will some dark suspicion of an ulterior motive in the skipper, and in the depths of his heart he liked best the sloops that came empty from the city. Then too these danced most boldly over the waves, and they steered toward regions where Martin had never been, far beyond Tyska Botten and Blackeberg—which were the boundary of the known world.
It was there too that the sun went down every evening in a red and glittering land of promise. Martin was entirely certain it was just there the sun went down, right behind the cape, and not anywhere else. He could see it all so plainly. He did not, however, imagine that the people living over there could see the sun at close range or that they need be afraid of its falling on their heads. If another boy had come to him and said such a thing, Martin would have thought him very stupid. For it is just the same with children as with grownups: they often form the strangest conceptions of the world; but if anyone shows them the consequences of their ideas, they say he is very stupid, or that it is improper to joke about serious things.
Summertime, strawberry time.
At that period summer was different from now. There was a joy that filled the days and evenings, pressing even into one’s nightly dreams; and morning was joy personified. But one morning Martin awoke earlier than usual, and when he heard a little bird twittering in the privet hedge before his window and saw the sun was shining, he sat up in bed and wanted to dress and go out. Then his mother came in and said he was to lie still a little while yet, because it was his birthday, and Maria was working at something outside which he mustn’t see before it was ready. She kissed him and said that now he was seven he ought to be really industrious and good in the summer, so that he wouldn’t need to be ashamed in the autumn when he was to begin school. But when Martin heard the word “school,” he forgot the bird twittering on the hedge and the sun that was shining, and his throat felt choked as if he was going to cry; but he controlled himself and didn’t cry. He didn’t know very clearly what “school” meant, but it sounded very harsh and hard.
To be sure his mother had school for him and Maria, but that was only for a short while every day down in the garden, in the lilac arbor, where butterflies flitted, yellow and white and blue, and bees hummed, while his mother told them
