Part 16 (1/2)
”Never, never!”
She didn't know how she got home, she told us later, only she had felt as if she were walking on air, she was so happy.
”And I didn't know enough to thank any one either. I was as if I had clean gone out of my wits!”
The first few nights that the clock hung on the wall at Henrik-hut, Oleana did not have much sleep, for every time the clock struck, she awoke and called down blessings on all the guests at Goodfields.
”Everything goes by the clock with us now,” said Oleana. ”It's nothing at all to do the work at Henrik-hut when you have a clock.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Oleana,” said I, ”we wanted to give you a clock.”--_Page 183._]
When the dark winter comes, when it snows and blows and the roads are blocked, how pleasant it will be to think that Oleana Henrik-hut, away up in the forest above Goodfields, has a clock ticking and ticking, and striking the hours; and that she does not need now to get up in the cold, dark nights, breathe upon the frosted panes and peep up at the stars to find out the time!
CHAPTER XIV
A TRIP TO GOODFIELDS SAETER
Mother Goodfields had made us a regular promise,--and shaken hands on it,--that we should go to the saeter some time during the summer.
Goodfields saeter lay about fourteen miles west in the mountains. Every day I reminded Mother Goodfields of her promise so that she should not forget it, you see. For it often seems to me that grown-up people forget very easily.
We had decided beforehand that it was to be Petter Kloed, Karsten, Andrine, and I who should go.
None of the grown-ups would join us. Mrs. Proet said she should have to be well paid to go, and really, such fine, fas.h.i.+onable ladies as she aren't fit for a saeter anyway. Miss Mangelsen was afraid there would be fleas, and Miss Melby was afraid that she being so stout, the boat we had to cross the mountain lake in would not be strong enough to bear her. Miss Jordan had been at a hundred saeters, she said, and the only difference among them was that one was a little dirtier than another; and that degree of difference she wouldn't bother herself to see, she said. Mrs. Kloed is so nervous she never dares do anything. So at last there were none to go but Petter, Karsten, Andrine, and myself, as I have said.
Karsten had taken it into his head that at saeters there were always bears, and that cream at saeters was always exactly an inch thick; and bears and inch-thick cream were what he wanted to see. Petter Kloed wished to get hold of certain mountain flowers that he could cla.s.sify.
Such botany I will have nothing to do with. I smell the flowers and think they are charming, but I don't care a b.u.t.ton which cla.s.s they belong to, not I! As for going to the saeter, Andrine and I wanted to go just for the fun of going.
Well, one day in August, Olsen, the farm-boy, and Trond Oppistuen were going to the saeter to cut hay. If we wished, we were welcome to go along with them.
If we wished! Hurrah!
The next morning off we went. The lunch, and Andrine, and I, and Karsten, and Petter Kloed were in a wagon, and Trond and Olsen walked alongside with their scythes and rakes on their shoulders.
Far, far up the mountain we were to go--away up where the trees looked no taller than half a pin's length, and the thin light air was white and s.h.i.+ning; up there and then far along to the west.
Olsen was red-haired and freckled, small and wiry. He kept step with the horse the whole way, but Trond lagged behind us down the slope.
We all sang, each our own tune, as we climbed. The air was clear, oh! so clear! The farms in the valley grew smaller and smaller, and the birch trees we pa.s.sed were little and stunted.
Whenever Petter Kloed jumped out of the wagon after a flower or anything, we whipped the horse so as to get as far ahead of him as possible; Petter is as lazy as a log and hates to walk a step, so it was good enough for him.
Any boy with more grown-up, mannish airs than Petter Kloed puts on could not be found the world over. He wears long trousers and has been in the theatre a thousand times, he says; he smokes cigarettes too; and, always, about everything, no matter what it is, he says, pooh! he has seen that before; so it seems as if there were nothing left that could amuse him. Andrine admires him sometimes, I know that very well, but such silly puppies can go or stay for all I care. However, it was jolly to have him with us on the saeter trip,--just for the fun of teasing him, you know.
Karsten and Petter disputed the whole time as to how high we were in the air and how high up it was possible to breathe. At last they got all the way to the moon and Jupiter.
”I'll bet you anything you choose that Jupiter has air that people could breathe,” said Karsten.
”That's just the kind of thing such a cabbage-head as you would bet on,”