Erick and Sally | Page 4

he happened in that field, then all other interests were pushed into the
background. He at once remembered that he had not finished reading
about his old Egyptian, and with a smoothed brow he ran into the
house.
The sun had set and it was growing dark among the bushes in the
garden, where the children, with red cheeks, were seeking each other
and hiding again. All of a sudden there came a loud, penetrating call:
"To bed, to bed!" Ritz had just found a fine hiding-place in the
henhouse, where he had comfortably settled, secure from being
discovered, when this terrible call reached him. It struck him like a
thunderbolt. Yes, it took his breath away so that he turned white and
hadn't the strength to rise; for, with the call came the remembrance of
the three sentences which he had to write: three whole sentences and
nine different qualities, and he had forgotten everything, and now all
the time had gone and he had to go to bed.
"Where are you, Ritz?" It sounded into his hiding-place. "Come, crawl
out. I know you are in there and will be covered with feathers from
head to foot."
The aunt stood before the henhouse, and Sally and Kaetheli beside her
full of expectation, for they had sought Ritz for a long time in vain. But
Auntie had experience in such things. Ritz actually came crawling out
of the henhouse and stood now in a lamentable condition before his
aunt.
"How you do look! You ought to have been in bed an hour ago, you
haven't a drop of blood in your cheeks," the aunt exclaimed. "What is
the matter with you, Ritz?"
"Where is Mamma?" asked Ritz in his fright.
"She is upstairs; come, she will put you to bed at once when I have got
you finally together. Come, Sally, and you, Kaetheli, go home now."
With these words she took Ritz by the hand, and drew him up the stone

steps into the house, and wanted to bring him up the stairs to the
bedroom. Then everything was over and no rescue from going to bed at
once. Now Ritz stopped his aunt and groaned: "I must--I must--I have
to write three sentences for punishment."
"There we have it." But Ritz looked so miserable that Auntie felt great
pity for him. "Come in here," she said, and shoved him into the
living-room, "and take out your things."
Now she sat down beside him and the whole affair proceeded finely.
Not that Auntie formed the sentences, no indeed, she was not going to
cheat the teacher; but she knew well what was needed to form a
sentence and she pushed and spurred Ritz and brought so many things
before him, and reminded him how they looked, that he had his three
sentences and his nine qualities together in no time. Now there came a
feeling to Ritz that he had not acted right, when he said that an aunt
must not always be reminding people, and when now Auntie asked:
"Ritz, why had you to write the sentences?" then the feeling grew
stronger in him, for he felt that he could not tell the cause of his
punishment without making his aunt angry. He stuttered, "I have--I
have--the teacher has said, that I made an unfitting sentence."
"Yes, I can imagine that," said Auntie. "Now quickly to bed."
Edi and Ritz slept in the same room and that was the place where the
two boys, every evening after the mother had said evening prayer with
them, and they were alone, exchanged their deepest thoughts and
experiences with one another and talked them over. Ritz had the
greatest respect for Edi, for although the latter was only a little older,
yet he was already in the fourth class, and he himself was only in the
second, and in history Edi knew more than the scholars in the fifth and
some in the sixth class. When now the two were well tucked in their
beds, Ritz said: "Edi, was it a sin that I said Auntie must not always
remind?" Edi thought a bit, such a case had never come to him. After a
while he said: "You see, Ritz, it goes thus: if you have done something
that is a sin, then you must go at once to Daddy and confess, there is no
help for it; but if you do that, then everything comes again in order and
you feel happy again, and afterwards you look out not to do the sinful

thing again. I can tell you that, Ritz. But if you do not confess, then you
are always full of fear when a door is slammed or a letter-carrier
unexpectedly brings a letter, then you think at once: 'There