Chapter 2 Pippi is kneading dough on the floor to make biscuits

Annika woke up extra early the next morning.She jumped out of bed and slapped her bare feet over to Tommy's bed. "Wake up, Tommy," she said, taking him by the hand, "let's go and see that funny little girl with the big shoes!" Tommy woke up all at once. "When I fell asleep, I always thought that there would be something interesting today, but I just couldn't remember what it was." He said, struggling to get off the collar of his pajamas.Then the two of them ran into the bathroom, washed their faces, and brushed their teeth, several times faster than usual.They were so happy and quick to get dressed, they slid upstairs and down the banisters, landed right next to the breakfast table, sat down, and yelled that they were going to have their hot chocolate sooner than their mother had budgeted for. It was a full hour earlier.

"I'm just asking," said their mother, "what's the matter with you?" "We're going next door to see a new little girl," said Tommy. "We could be there all day," Annika added. This morning Pippi was baking ginger biscuits.She made a large ball of dough and was spreading it out on the kitchen floor. "Think about it," Pippi said to her little monkey, "you have to make at least five hundred ginger biscuits. What's the use of a small piece and a panel?" Then she sprawled on the floor and pressed heart-shaped biscuits out of the mold.

"Don't you walk on the dough, Mr. Nelson!" she said angrily, just as the doorbell rang. Pippi ran to open the door.She was as white as a flour worker from head to toe, and when she shook hands with Tommy and Annika, a cloud of flour fell on them. "It's very kind of you to come and see me," she said, raising another puddle of flour from her apron.Tommy and Annika had too much flour in their throats and coughed. "What are you doing?" Tommy asked her. "Well, smart people like you wouldn't believe me if I said I was sweeping chimneys," said Pippi. "I'm actually baking biscuits. It'll be right away. Sit on the box for a while, please." .”

Pippi can work very quickly.Tommy and Annika sat on the crate and watched her press out the cakes and throw them into tins and put the tins in the oven.They feel like watching a fast-motion movie. "Okay," said Pippi, finishing the last can, and slamming the oven door shut. "What shall we do now?" asked Tommy. "I don't know what you think of 'drying'," said Pippi. "As for me, I'm not a lazy person. I'm a king of my stuff, so of course I'll never be free." "What do you say you are?" Annika asked her. "The king of finding things."

"What's that?" Tommy asked. "Of course he is the king of looking for things! What else could it be?" Pippi said, sweeping all the flour on the floor into a pile. "The world is full of things waiting to be found, and that's what the King of Finding Things does." "What are you looking for?" Annika asked again. "Oh, all kinds of things," said Pippi, "gold nuggets, ostrich feathers, dead mice, rubber bands, young partridges, and so on and so on." Tommy and Annika heard that Pippi said that she was a king of finding things, and they thought it was fun, and they wanted to be a king of finding things right away.But Tommy said he hoped to find a gold nugget instead of a young grouse.

"We'll have to wait and see," said Pippi, "we'll find something. But let's find it quickly, before the other great finders get there first, and find the gold nuggets and everything else that's waiting to be found. " So the three hunting kings set off.They thought it best to look around the houses near by first, for Pippi said there were young partridges deep in the woods, but the best things were almost always where people lived. "But there are exceptions," she said, "and I've had the opposite. I remember once looking for something in the forests of Borneo. In wild forests where no one has ever been. What do you think I found? I I found a lovely wooden leg! Later, I gave it to an old man who only had one leg, and he told me that such a good wooden leg can’t be bought even with money.”

Tommy and Annika watched Pippi learn how to be a great finder.Pippi ran from one side of the road to the other, setting up the awning, searching and searching.Sometimes she crawled on the ground, put her hand over the fence, and said in disappointment: "Strange! I clearly saw a piece of gold!" "Can you really take what you find?" Annika asked. "Of course, as long as it's on the ground." Pippi said. A little further past, an old man was sleeping on the grass in front of his house. "That's something on the ground," said Pippi. "We've found him. Take it away!"

Tommy and Annika are terrified. "No, no, Pippi, we can't take a person away, absolutely not!" said Tommy. "And what are we going to do with him?" "What do you want him for? We can do many things with him. You can put him in the rabbit box as a rabbit, feed him dandelions. But if you don't like it, let him go. I don't care. But it's something else. Find the Great King of the East, and he will be taken away. I really don't want to think about it." They keep going.Pippi suddenly screamed wildly: "Well, I've never seen anything like it!" she cried, picking up an old rusty cake tin in the grass. "What a find! What a find! Who can have a few pie tins?"

Tommy looked at the tin and wondered, and asked: "What are you doing with it?" "Oh, you can do many things with it," said Pippi. "First, you can put cakes in it, and that is a cake tin with cakes. Second, you can put no cakes in it, and that is a cake tin without cakes. No cakes are worse than There are cakes, but they are also very good." She turned the tin over and looked at it. It was very rusted and there was a hole in the bottom. "Looks like it's a cake tin without cake," she said after a moment of thought, "but you can put your head in it and pretend it's in the middle of the night."

That's what she does.She covered her head with a pie tin and walked around like a little tin tower.As she was walking, she bumped into a barbed wire fence, turned over and fell to the other side of the net.There was a terrible thud when the tin hit the ground. "Look!" said Pippi, taking the tin from his head. "If I didn't have this thing, my face would hit the ground first, and I would get black and blue." "But," said Annika, "you wouldn't have fallen over the barbed wire without the pie tin on..." Before she could finish her sentence, Pippi screamed again, triumphantly holding up an empty spool.

"Looks like I've had a lucky day," she said. "What a lovely little spool that blows soap bubbles and wears a thread around my neck as a necklace! I'll go home and make it." At this moment, the yard door of a nearby family opened, and a little boy ran out.He looked terrified, which was no wonder, for the five older boys came out after him.They quickly grabbed him, pushed him against the fence, and beat him together.Five people fight at the same time.The little boy covered his face desperately and cried. "Hit him, mates," cried the biggest and best-built boy, "to keep him out of the street again!" "Oh dear," said Annika, "they hit Willer. How could they be so cruel!" "It's that beastly Benguet. He fights all the time," said Tommy. "Five to one, what a bunch of cowards!" Pippi walked over to the group of boys and tapped Bengt on the back with a finger. "Hey," she said, "you're going to beat poor Wheeler to a pulp one of five of you?" Bengt turned and saw a girl he had never seen before.This unruly and weird little girl dared to knock him!He looked at her in surprise at first, and then ridiculed. "Guys," he said, "guys! Let go of Weller and look at this. A little girl!" He patted his knee and laughed.In a blink of an eye, the boys surrounded Pippi.Get rid of Weller, of course, and he wiped away his tears, and walked cautiously over to Tommy's side. "Have you ever seen hair like this? What a fire! And those shoes!" said Bengt. "Can I borrow one? I want to row and I don't have a boat." Then he seized Pippi by one of the braids, and immediately let go, crying: "Oh, I'm on fire!" Five boys surrounded Pippi, hopping on one leg and shouting: "Carrot head! Carrot head!" Pippi stood in the circle, smiling kindly.Benguet thought she would be angry, or cry, or at least she should be scared.Seeing nothing, he pushed her. "I think it's very rude of you to treat Miss like this," said Pippi, and lifted him high in the air with her strong hands, carried him to a nearby birch tree, and hung him on a branch.Then she picked up another boy and hung it on another branch.Then she picked up another boy and sat him on a high yard gatepost outside the house.Then she picked up another boy, threw him over the fence, and made him sit in a flower bed in the garden next door.She tossed the last bully into a toy cart on the side of the road.Pippi, Tommy, Annika, and Weller stood watching for a while.The little bullies were too scared to speak. Pippi said: "You are all cowards! Five people beat a doll! This is cowardly behavior. Then you push and push a defenseless little girl. Oh, how shameful and disgusting you are!" "Come on, let's go home," she said to Tommy and Annika.She turned to Weller again: "If they want to hit you again, come and tell me." Bengt was sitting on the tree and did not dare to move. Pippi said to him: "Is there anything else you want to say about my hair or my shoes? Better say it now before I go home." Benguet had nothing more to say about Pippi's shoes and hair.So Pippi went away with the pie tin in one hand and the spool in the other, followed by Tommy and Annika. When they returned to Pippi's orchard, Pippi said: "My dear, what a pity! I found two such good things, and you found nothing. You'll have to look again. Tommy, why don't you look in that old tree? Old trees always look for The most ideal place for the King of East and West.” Tommy said he didn't really expect Annika and him to find anything, but just to please Pippi he stuck his hand all the way into the hollow tree. "Oh..." he said in great surprise, and withdrew his hand.A handsome leather-bound notebook is gripped between his thumb and forefinger.There is also a silver pen stuck in the place where the pen is inserted next to it. "Well, that's strange," said Tommy. "You see," said Pippi, "there's nothing better than being a good finder. It's strange how few people do it. They're carpenters, shoemakers, chimney sweeps, and so on, but they're not great finders. Let me tell you, this is wrong!" Then she said to Annika: "Why don't you touch that old tree hole too? There's almost always something to be found in an old tree hole." Annika reached into the tree hole and almost immediately produced a red coral necklace.Tommy and she just stood there with their mouths open, so surprised.They decided to be the king of finding things every day from now on. Pippi tossed the ball until midnight the first night, and now she suddenly felt sleepy. "I think I have to go in and take a nap," she said. "Aren't you going to come in and put me to sleep?" Sitting on the edge of the bed and taking off his shoes, Pippi looked at them and said: "Benguet said he wanted to row. Huh!" she snorted contemptuously. "I'll teach him to row, I will! Someday!" "I say, Pippi," said Tommy carefully, "why do you wear such big shoes?" "Needless to say, so I can twist my toes," she replied.Then she lay down and went to sleep.She always sleeps with her feet on the pillow and her head on the other side, covered with a quilt. “In Guatemala, that’s how people sleep,” she explained. “It’s the best way to sleep, and you can twist your toes while you sleep.” "Can you fall asleep without listening to a lullaby?" Tommy and Annika heard a hum coming from under the covers.It was Pippi singing a lullaby to herself.They tiptoed and walked out gently, not disturbing her anymore.At the door, they looked back at the bed again.They could see nothing but Pippi's feet on the pillow.Pippi lay there and twisted his toes desperately. Tommy and Annika ran home.Annika clutched her coral necklace tightly. "It's weird," she said. "Tommy, do you think... Pippi put these things there?" "Hard to say," replied Tommy, "Pippi's facts are uncertain."