CHAPTER XI

TWO LITTLE MAIDS

When the Barren Moor children set out again from the forester’s home, they were only five. Brita-Carrie had been allowed to stay with the little sister. So the two little maids were together again.

It was the forester himself who had wished it. Orderly person that he was, he noticed and marveled when the new little ragamuffin who, he thought, would scarcely know enough to feed herself, came into his room to thank him for her meal and at once saw his paper-knife under the table. ‘Is a knife under table,’ she piped, in a sweet voice and crept down after the object in question.

And sure enough, the paper-knife he prized so highly and had searched for in vain lay under the deerskin there.

‘Won’t you give it to me?’ he said, and stretched out his hand toward her.

Brita-Carrie went to him at once and gave him the knife.

The forester, who knew how hard it was to teach dogs to retrieve, was taken aback. He had thought that it would be harder to get a child to mind.

‘Ita-Tawie, tom, new doll, sin’ hennenly Tana to new doll.’

Martha-Greta, who was already at home in the forester’s pretty pleasant rooms, came toddling in and pulled Brita-Carrie with her. She wanted to show her a new doll, a real one, with clear eyes in a fine porcelain head, and she wanted them to sing it to sleep as they used to with other dolls.

The little ones put the doll to bed in a sewing-machine drawer in the bedroom. In there, with her foster-parents, Martha-Greta now had her own pretty little bed. Brita-Carrie put her doll too in the machine-drawer, a stick of wood wrapped up in rags. Then they sang sweetly and devoutly their song about heavenly Canaan to the two sleepy dolls, while they rocked the drawer between them.

Gerda, the foster-mother, ran after her husband. He must hear and see them, see and compare the already rosy-cheeked, happy-eyed little foundling in neat pretty clothes, with the other, the little paleface with suffering in her eyes, and in thin worn-out rags. Gerda knew well why she wanted to give her husband this glimpse of them.

The two stood close to each other, and listened to the children’s song.

‘Arthur, they’re singing about “Heavenly Canaan.” Listen to the new little one, and it _isn’t_ about “many, many swans,”’ she added shyly. ‘You don’t think you’ve been fooled by the little angel?’

‘No, indeed! I’ll tell you now I absolutely do not want to be without her. It would be altogether too empty and quiet in the house again.’

‘Arthur, do you remember the proverb that says, “The kettle that cooks for one, cooks just as well for two”?’

‘You mean--well, God knows----’

The forester looked thoughtfully at the two little ones there on the floor, who continued to sing and rock the machine-drawer. One of them he would, and wanted to keep. But the other--the pale little being with thin cheeks and the dark, suffering eyes--Well, she must go out on the roads again. And no mother and father owned them, his wife had said.

‘Well, then, _let_ the kettle cook for two,’ he said at last.

The children sang and sang, while the foster-parents, serious, with bright faces, went out to the older children who sat in the kitchen and talked with Dordi. They did not want to take the little ones without the consent of the older ones. And one can well understand that in a little house, where the very windows smiled and winked up under the eaves, and where the house itself seemed painted with red whortleberries and cream, there would be a good place for the little ones to stay.