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TOP-OF-THE-WORLD STORIES
KNUT SPELEVINK[1]
Knut was a poor orphan boy who lived with his grandmother at Perlebank in a little hut on the shore.
He had a shirt, a jacket, a pair of trousers and a cap; and what more does one need in summer? In winter he had woolen stockings and birch-bark shoes. That wasn't so little, after all. He was cheerful—always happy indeed, though always hungry. It is a great art to know how to be happy and hungry at the same time!
His good grandmother was so poor that she seldom had enough food for the boy to eat all he wanted. She spun woolen yarn and sent Knut with it to Mr. Peterman's grand estate, The Ridge, several miles away, where he could always sell the yarn. When Knut returned with the money, Grandmother would buy flour and bake bread. She made it in big flat cakes with a hole in the middle, strung these cakes on a stick and hung the stick high up in the hut where the cakes would dry and harden, and could be kept for a long time. If the yarn brought a good price, she might even buy some sour milk, too. Potatoes they got from a tiny fenced-in field, no larger than the floor of a small room. Then, too, Grandmother owned a fish-net, so they had fresh fish sometimes—when Fisher Jonas's boy could help Knut to put out the net.
It was indeed seldom, however, that Knut and his grandmother were well supplied with food, and the boy's little stomach often called for more; but even then he was as cheerful as ever.
One morning he sat on the beach, picking up yellowish stones that looked a little like soft, warm, boiled potatoes. Poor Knut! They would not do to eat, and he laughingly threw them away, but as he did so, he happened to see something that lay among the stones. Picking it up, he found that it was a little