"Are those birds really blue?" asks my little boy.
"Sky-blue," I answer. "And utterly broken-hearted."
"Father, can't we go and look at the birds?"
I take my little boy's hands in mine:
"I don't think we will," I say. "Why should still more silly boys do so? You can't imagine how it goes to one's heart to look at those poor captive beasts."
"Father, I should so much like to go."
"Take my advice and don't. The animals there are not the real animals, you see. They are ill and ugly and angry because of their captivity and their longing and their pain."
"I should so much like to see them."
"Now let me tell you something. To go to the Zoological Gardens costs five cents for you and ten cents for me. That makes fifteen cents altogether, which is an awful lot of money. We won't go there now, but we'll buy the biggest money-box we can find: one of those money-boxes shaped like a pig. Then we'll put fifteen cents in it. And every Thursday we'll put fifteen cents in the pig. By-and-by, that will grow into quite a fortune: it will make such a lot of money that, when you are grown up, you can take a trip to Africa and go to the desert and hear the wild, the real lion roaring and tremble just like the people tremble down there. And you can go to the great, dark forests and see the real blue birds flying proud and free among the flowers. You can't think how glad you will be, how beautiful they will look and how they will sing to you.."
"Father, I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens now."
My little boy does not understand a word of what I say. And I am at my wits' end.
"Shall we go and have some cakes at Josty's?" I ask.
"I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens."
I can read in his eyes that he is thinking of the captive lion. Ugly human instincts are waking up in his soul. The mouse is forgotten and the snail; and the chaffinches have built their nest to no purpose.
At last I get up and say, bluntly, without any further explanation:
"You are not going to the Zoological Gardens. Now we'll go home."
And home we go. But we are not in a good temper.
Of course, I get over it and I buy an enormous money-box pig. Also we put the money into it and he thinks that most interesting.
But, later in the afternoon, I find him in the bed-room engaged in a piteous game.
He has built a cage, in which he has imprisoned the pig. He is teasing it and hitting it with his whip, while he keeps shouting to it:
"You can't get out and bite me, you stupid pig! You can't get out!"
IV
We have beer-soup and Aunt Anna to dinner. Now beer-soup is a nasty dish and Aunt Anna is not very nice either.
She has yellow teeth and a little hump and very severe eyes, which are not even both equally severe. She is nearly always scolding us and, when she sees a chance, she pinches us.
The worst of all, however, is that she is constantly setting us a good example, which can easily end by gradually and inevitably driving us to embrace wickedness.
Aunt Anna does not like beer-soup any more than we do. But of course she eats it with a voluptuous expression on her face and looks angrily at my little boy, who does not even make an attempt to behave nicely:
"Why doesn't the little boy eat his delicious beer-soup?" she asks.
A scornful silence.
"Such delicious beer-soup! I know a poor, wretched boy who would be awfully glad to have such delicious beer-soup."
My little boy looks with great interest at Auntie, who is swallowing her soup with eyes full of ecstatic bliss:
"Where is he?" he asks.
Aunt Anna pretends not to hear.
"Where is the poor boy?" he asks again.
"Yes, where is he?" I ask. "What's his name?"
Aunt Anna gives me a furious glance.
"What's his name, Aunt Anna?" asks my little boy. "Where does he live? He can have my beer-soup with pleasure."
"Mine too," I say, resolutely, and I push my plate from me.
My little boy never takes his great eyes off Aunt Anna's face. Meanwhile, she has recovered herself:
"There are many poor boys who would thank God if they could get such delicious beer-soup," she says. "Very many. Everywhere."
"Yes, but tell us of one, Auntie," I say.
My little boy has slipped down from his chair. He stands with his chin just above the table and both his hands round his plate, ready to march off with the beer-soup to the poor boy, if only he can get his address.
But Aunt Anna does not allow herself to be played with:
"Heaps of poor boys," she says again. "Hun-dreds! And therefore another little boy, whom I will not name, but who is in this room, ought to be ashamed that he is not thankful for his beer-soup."
My little boy stares at Aunt Anna like the bird fascinated by the snake.
"Such delicious beer-soup!" she says. "I must really ask for another little helping."
Aunt Anna revels in her martyrdom. My little boy stands speechless, with open mouth and round eyes.
I push my chair back and say, with genuine exasperation:
"Now, look here, Aunt Anna, this is really too bad! Here we are, with a whole lot of beer-soup, which we don't care about in the least and which we would be very glad to get rid of, if we only knew someone who would have it. You are the only one that knows of anybody. You know a poor boy who would dance for joy if he got some beer-soup. You know hundreds. But you won't tell us their names or where they live."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"And you yourself sit quite calmly eating two whole helpings, though you know quite well that you're going to have an omelette to follow. That's really very naughty of you, Aunt Anna."
Aunt Anna chokes with annoyance. My little boy locks his teeth with a snap and looks with every mark of disgust at that wicked old woman.
And I turn with calm earnestness to his mother and say:
"After this, it would be most improper for us ever to have beer-soup here again. We don't care for it and there are hundreds of little boys who love it. If it must be made, then Aunt Anna must come every Saturday and fetch it. She knows where the boys live."
The omelette is eaten in silence, after which Aunt Anna shakes the dust from her shoes. She won't have any coffee today.
While she is standing in the hall and putting on her endless wraps, a last doubt arises in my little boy's soul. He opens his green eyes wide before her face and whispers:
"Aunt Anna, where do the boys live?"
Aunt Anna pinches him and is shocked and goes off, having suffered a greater defeat than she can ever repair.
V
My little boy comes into my room and tells me, with a very long face, that Jean is dead. And we put all nonsense on one side and hurry away to the Klampenborg train, to go where Jean is.
For Jean is the biggest dog that has lived for some time.
He once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He once bit his own master. He could give such a look out of his eyes and open such