TRUYỆN CỔ ANDERSEN - Trang 636

eel-weir, on the estate of Silkborg, and sometimes even to the distant town
of Randers. There was no one under whose care he could leave Little
Christina; so she was almost always with him in his boat, or playing in the
wood among the blossoming heath, or picking the ripe wild berries.
Sometimes, when her father had to go as far as the town, he would take
Little Christina, who was a year younger than Ib, across the heath to the
cottage of Jeppe Jans, and leave her there. Ib and Christina agreed together
in everything; they divided their bread and berries when they were hungry;
they were partners in digging their little gardens; they ran, and crept, and
played about everywhere. Once they wandered a long way into the forest,
and even ventured together to climb the high ridge. Another time they
found a few snipes’ eggs in the wood, which was a great event. Ib had never
been on the heath where Christina’s father lived, nor on the river; but at last
came an opportunity. Christina’s father invited him to go for a sail in his
boat; and the evening before, he accompanied the boatman across the heath
to his house. The next morning early, the two children were placed on the
top of a high pile of firewood in the boat, and sat eating bread and wild
strawberries, while Christina’s father and his man drove the boat forward
with poles. They floated on swiftly, for the tide was in their favor, passing
over lakes, formed by the stream in its course; sometimes they seemed quite
enclosed by reeds and water-plants, yet there was always room for them to
pass out, although the old trees overhung the water and the old oaks
stretched out their bare branches, as if they had turned up their sleeves and
wished to show their knotty, naked arms. Old alder-trees, whose roots were
loosened from the banks, clung with their fibres to the bottom of the stream,
and the tops of the branches above the water looked like little woody
islands. The water-lilies waved themselves to and fro on the river,
everything made the excursion beautiful, and at last they came to the great
eel-weir, where the water rushed through the flood-gates; and the children
thought this a beautiful sight. In those days there was no factory nor any
town house, nothing but the great farm, with its scanty-bearing fields, in
which could be seen a few herd of cattle, and one or two farm laborers. The
rushing of the water through the sluices, and the scream of the wild ducks,