Selma Lagerlöf - The Emperor of Portugallia

Agrippa went about in the parish "doctoring" clocks, and once he set foot in a house where there was a tall, old-fashioned chimney clock he could not rest until he had removed the works, to see if there was anything wrong with them. And he never failed to find flaws which necessitated his taking the whole clock apart. That meant he would be days putting it together again. Meantime, one had to house and feed him.

The worst of it was that if Agrippa once got his hands on a clock it would never run as well as before, and afterward one had to let him tinker it at least once a year, or it would stop going altogether. The old man tried to do honest and conscientious work, but just the name he ruined all the clocks he touched.

Therefore it was best never to let him fool with one's clock. That

Glory Goldie knew, of course, but she saw no way of saving the

Dalecarlian timepiece, which was ticking away inside the hut.

Agrippa knew of the clock being there and had long watched for an opportunity to get at it, but at other times when he was seen thereabout, Katrina had been at home to keep him at a safe distance.

When the old man came up he stopped right in front of the little girl, struck the ground with his stick, and rattled off:

"Here comes Johan Utter Agrippa Prästberg, drummer-boy to His Royal Highness and the Crown! I have faced shot and shell and fear neither angels nor devils. Anybody home?"

Glory Goldie did not have to reply, for he strode past her into the house and went straight over to the big Dalecarlian clock.

The girl ran in after him and tried to tell him what a good clock it was, that it ran neither too fast nor too slow and needed no mending.

"How can a clock run well that has not been regulated by Johan

Utter Agrippa Prästberg!" the old man roared.

He was so tall he could open the clock-case without having to stand on a chair. In a twinkling he removed the face and the works and placed them on the table. Glory Goldie clenched the hand under her apron, and tears came to her eyes; but what could she do to stop him?

Agrippa was in a fever of a hurry to find out what ailed the clock, before Jan or Katrina could get back and tell him it needed no repairing. He had brought with him a small bundle, containing work-tools and grease jars, which he tore open with such haste that half its contents fell to the floor.

Glory Goldie was told to pick up everything that had dropped. And any one who has seen Agrippa Prästberg must know she would not have dared do anything but obey him. She got down on all fours and handed him a tiny saw and a mallet.

"Anything more!" he bellowed. "Be glad you're allowed to serve His

Majesty's and the Kingdom's drummer-boy, you confounded crofter-brat!"

"No, not that I see," replied the little girl meekly. Never had she felt so crushed and unhappy. She was to look after the house for her mother and father, and now this had to happen!

"But the spectacles?" snapped Agrippa. "They must have dropped, too?"

"No," said the girl, "there are no spectacles here." Suddenly a faint hope sprang up in her. What if he couldn't do anything to the clock without his glasses? What if they should be lost? And just then her eye lit on the spectacle-case, behind a leg of the table.

The old man rummaged and searched among the cog-wheels and springs in his bundle. "I don't see but I'll have to get down on the floor myself, and hunt," he said presently. "Get up, crofter-brat!"

Quick as a flash the little girl's hand shot out and closed over the spectacle-case, which she hid under her apron.

"Up with you!" thundered Agrippa. "I believe you're lying to me.

What are you hiding under your apron? Come! Out with it!"

She promptly drew out one hand. The other hand she had kept under her apron the whole time. Now she had to show that one, too. Then he saw the buttered bread.

"Ugh! It's buttered bread!" Agrippa shrank back as if the girl were holding out a rattlesnake.

"I sat eating it when you came, and then I put it out of sight for,

I know you don't like butter."

The old man got down on his hands and knees and began to search, but to no purpose, of course.

"You must have left them where you were last," said Glory Goldie.

He had wondered about that himself, though he thought it unlikely.

At all events he could do nothing to the clock without his glasses.

He had no choice but to gather up his tools and replace the works in the clock-case.

While his back was turned the little girl slipped the spectacles into his bundle, where he found them when he got to Lövdala Manor – the last place he had been to before coming to Ruffluck Croft. On opening the bundle to show they were not there, the first object that caught his eye was the spectacle-case.

Next time he saw Jan and Katrina in the pine grove outside the church, he went up to them.

"That girl of yours, that handy little girl of yours is going to be a comfort to you," he told them.

There were many who said to Jan of Ruffluck that his little girl would be a comfort to him when she was grown. Folks did not seem to understand that she already made him happy every day and every hour that God granted them. Only once in the whole time of her growing period did Jan have to suffer any annoyance or humiliation on her account.

The summer the little girl was eleven her father took her to Lövdala Manor on the seventeenth of August, which was the birthday of the lord of the manor, Lieutenant Liljecrona.

The seventeenth of August was always a day of rejoicing that was looked forward to all the year by every one in Svartsjö and in Bro, not only by the gentry, who participated in all the festivities, but also by the young folk of the peasantry, who came in crowds to Lövdala to look at the smartly dressed people and to listen to the singing and the dance music.

There was something else, too, that attracted the young people to Lövdala on the seventeenth of August, and that was all the fruit that was to be found in the orchard at that time. To be sure, the children had been taught strict honesty in most matters, but when it came to a question of such things as hang on bushes and trees, out in the open, they felt at liberty to take as much as they wanted, just so they were careful not to be caught at it.

When Jan came into the orchard with his Glory Goldie he noticed how the little girl opened her eyes when she saw all the fine apple trees, laden with big round greenings. And Jan would not have denied her the pleasure of tasting of the fruit had he not seen Superintendent Söderlind and two other men walking about in the orchard, on the lookout for trespassers.

He hurried Glory Goldie over to the lawn in front of the manor-house, out of temptation's way. It was plain that her thoughts were still on the apple trees and the gooseberry bushes, for she never even glanced at the prettily dressed children of the upper class or at the beautiful flowers. Jan could not get her to listen to the fine speeches delivered by the Dean of Bro and Engineer Boraeus of Borg, in honour of the day. Why she would not even listen to Sexton Blackie's congratulatory poem!

Anders Öster's clarinet could be heard from the house. It was playing such lively dance music just then that folks were hardly able to hold themselves still, but the little girl only tried to find a pretext for getting back to the orchard.

Jan kept a firm grip on her hand all the while and no matter what excuse she would hit upon to break away, he never relaxed his hold. Everything went smoothly for him until evening, when dusk fell.

Then coloured lanterns were brought out and set in the flower beds and hung in the trees and in among the clinging ivy that covered the house wall. It was such a pretty sight that Jan, who had never before seen anything of that kind, quite lost his head and hardly knew whether he was still on earth; but just the same he did not let go of the little hand.