CHAPTER XXI

MASTER AND MISTRESS

The children woke up early in the morning, long before the sun was up. It was very cold so early in the morning, so they crept down under the cover again.

It was pleasant beyond words to lie like this and hear the birds wake up one after the other.

The crows were earliest. They croaked like fire-watchmen, with rough coarse voices. They began at once to clamor about rats and birds’ eggs, and soon flew boisterously out of the woods.

Magpies peeped out of their well-made nests high in the tree-tops. They did not have their beaks outside the nest before they laughed. They laughed because a fox far away had caught a rabbit, and become frightened and left part of it for their breakfast. They laughed at the spring birds that had dared come north into the snow so early. They seemed to have forgotten that nowadays there was famine, with winter lasting until the sun was high in the heavens.

‘Ke-ke-ke-ke. They’ll fall from the branches, every one, starved to death, frozen to death.’ And they laughed at the children who had found a nest in the woods. For that matter, they knew the Barren Moor children well. More than once they had laughed at them when they had been in the woods gathering small branches and dragging their burdens to little gray man-nests. They had seen them pick berries on the wide marshes near houses. And now the foolish youngsters lay in the middle of the woods. And they had no wings to fly with or beak to peck with if any owl or a fox came upon them. ‘Ke-ke-ke-ke,’ the magpies laughed in chorus.

About five o’clock the yellow-hammer woke up. In the softest voice, scarcely audible, she whispered to her mate, ‘Are you awake?’

He answered with a soft, sleepy ‘Yes, of course, I’m awake.’

At the same time, beside each other, they stuck their small heads out of the nest.

Such exultation as sprang from their throats when they saw how spring and summer were coming.

‘See-see,’ said she. ‘See-see, I was right. No famine this year. We can hurry with the nest.’

‘And begin to think of young ones,’ twittered he.

And jubilation broke forth again from them, and from other small birds that had just come north to look around.

‘Nowhere in the world is it like this,’ they sang. ‘See the sun over the mountain. Soon it will stay all night. The woods are big. Already we can stay here as we did last year. We were cold then, we starved then. But it was nice to have a nest. We’ll take it again, we’ll take it again. Sun and spring. No famine. Sun and spring!’ In different languages and in different melodies it rang out from small throats--‘Sun and spring!’ ‘Nest and young ones!’ Far, far out in the woods it could be heard.

The children lay still and listened. They heard the black cock calling, and knew well how funny he looked when, to the calling, he danced around, around.

And just now, just as the sun rose, the wood-grouse began his call, his mysterious whispering, his queer sucking noise with the final shriek of joy: the joy of living and having a gentle little mate to sing to.

A strong odor of resin and moist pine needles, of newly bared earth here and there, forced its way under the fir on the newly wakened south wind.

The children stuck their noses up over the cover. They drank in the air and felt the same desire the birds had to fly up, to chirp and sing.

They heard the brook; already freed, it purled near them, that, too, in a twittering exultation.

They sat up in bed: at the same time the desire to sing seized them.

Maglena started:

‘Morning between the mountains, Running brook and flood Springing up like fountains, Sighing God is good, God is good.

‘Now I see day breaking, Light comes through the wood, Valleys now are waking, Sighing God is good, God is good.

‘The forest birds are singing In a happy mood, As on a branch they’re swinging, Chirping God is good, God is good.

‘Soul, wake up and cry In a happy mood, Raise a song on high, Sing that God is good, God is good.’

‘Oh, but it’s nice and wonderful and fun to have a house and church in the woods!’ said Maglena. She sprang up when they had finished the song.

‘Now we’re going to clean ourselves and clean up the house,’ she sang to her own melody. ‘I’ll wash me and I’ll wash you, and I’ll comb me and I’ll comb you.’

Maglena danced a little schottische up to Magnus, who sat in bed and scratched his head with both hands. His face was rather spotted, for it was black with smoke from the fire, and, besides, in his sleep he had rubbed his eyes with hands that were not especially clean.

‘That isn’t any nice song,’ muttered Magnus, who was at once out of humor. ‘Wash yourself, you. Your nose is as black as the old hen at Sven Paul’s.’

‘But you are as spotted as the black-and-white goat at Karl Nilsson’s. What do you think Anna-Lisa would say? I think Per-Erik looks different from you now all right.’

‘Just as if it were any fun to take after the way he looks now. Go ’way, I’m going down to the brook after water.’

‘But first, Magnus, you’ve got to have a clean face and hands, whether you want to or not.’

Maglena took fast hold of the wriggling boy’s arm.

‘I suppose you think you’ll work me into the little shirt I got last week, or let me go around naked like Cain in the picture at Karl Nilsson’s. Let me go, do you hear?’

Magnus sputtered and fought like a lynx, ready to protect his skin to the utmost.

‘Andy, hold the boy for me!’ panted Maglena. ‘He hasn’t been washed for three days. I thought of it to-night that I really had to try to get him washed and combed, now that he hasn’t got Anna-Lisa.’

She freed one hand and scratched her head carefully and unconsciously.

Andy put down the armful of branches he had carried in, and came to Maglena’s aid.

‘You ought to be ashamed to look worse than a pig.’

‘But you don’t scrape pigs clean with snow-crust, either, and that’s what Maglena was going to do to me, she doesn’t know any better,’ cried Magnus.

Big tears made clean paths down his cheeks that were quite rosy, giving an example of how they would look when really washed.

‘Go down to the brook after water in this bowl so we can wash you clean, if you don’t wash yourself,’ said Andy mediatingly.

Magnus tore himself furiously from Maglena’s hold. Swift as lightning he put out his tongue at her; and disappeared toward the brook, quick as an eel.

Without doubt, Maglena looked more disappointed than pleased when he, after a while, came back ‘in,’ his face shining and clean, dripping with water.

‘Give me a rag,’ he puffed pompously, ‘so I can rub my face. I washed myself in the brook.’

Maglena, who during his absence had called forth the courage and strength of a lioness for a regular ‘house-cleaning’ of her brother, tore the sleeve violently out of father’s old shirt and gave it to him.

‘What in the world are you scratching me for?’ cried Magnus angrily when Maglena could not resist running the rag around the boy’s neck and ears a few times.

‘I suppose you have eyes in the back of your head so you can see that your neck is black.’

‘Gracious, girl, then I’ll have to help you too, when you’re going to wash, ’cause, as far as I can see, you don’t have eyes in the back of your head either.’

Maglena drew back, defeated by her brother’s argument. It was rather a come-down to her mother and mistress dignity to have to yield.

But her good humor soon returned.

She dropped the sheepskin she had been folding on the moss, and went with quick steps to the knapsack which she lifted off the knot in the tree. Out of it she finally fished the brass comb. With a triumphant air she turned toward Magnus with the comb in her hand.

But he was at this moment inaccessible, strong, superior, properly washed for the first time without help. Clean hands, dried with a rag!

‘Girl, go down to the brook and rub the black off your nose. Now _you_ look like the pig at Karl Nilsson’s.’

But now Andy had to laugh, and when Andy laughed heartily like that, the others had to laugh too.

‘Bring the comb here,’ said Magnus, who first became serious. His expression was wildly resolute, and he took the comb as if it had been the spear with which he had been condemned to kill himself.

‘If I’m good enough to wash myself, then I guess I can manage to comb myself too, even if it has to be as often as once or twice a week.’

Maglena, who had given her brother the comb with a distrustful provoking sniff, soon came back from the brook just as shiningly clean as Magnus.

He sat sternly attentive before the fire, with his hair dripping wet, straining like small candle flames toward his neck.

Beyond a doubt, he was combed, for his scalp shone red where his hair was parted. Magnus was cold, and his teeth chattered, but his blue lips did not want to confess how little pleasant he found life in this self-cleaning process.

‘I believe you’re cold,’ said Maglena, who looked at Magnus through the curly hair that she parted and pulled and jerked at to get clean and, if possible, smooth.

‘Am I cold! Well, I guess I am cold! Look if there’s ice down the back of my waist.’

Magnus sat absolutely still, as if he himself had frozen into an ice statue and so had lost all power to move.

Maglena felt a little remorse. She twisted her hair hastily around a comb of wire with a brass edge which she fastened high at the back of her head. Then she tied the woolen scarf on again and began quickly with the morning chores. First ‘barn chores,’ of course, to get milk for the boys and the household. She had to see to the cattle, scrape and brush them. ‘The old folks’ suddenly became a whole big herd of cattle.

The mistress got breakfast for the ‘men.’ She nearly pushed the ‘farmhand’ Magnus into the fire in the struggle to get him to sit near it and the heat. He, who knew he was a servant, wanted to give the master the place at the ‘head’ of the table.

While they ate, Maglena, like a real mistress, stood at the fire and knitted mittens. _After_ the men, it would be her turn to get her share of the milk and bits of bread and crusts she had saved in the knapsack. Andy put wood on the fire and sent his ‘man’ to the woods with the sled. To-day he was to get wood for the household, and he felt the importance of being both horse and servant.

Maglena had made the bed, swept the floor with a bundle of birch twigs, washed the dishes, and shaken the bedclothes. As mistress she now sat by the fire on a folded robe, and mended the master’s trousers, while the master himself crouched in the other robe and patiently waited for the garment that is rather necessary to a master.

In the meantime, she asked him questions out of the catechism, which of course they carried with them.

‘What is the value of industry?’

‘Industry promotes good health and prosperity, and prevents many opportunities for sin.--But, goodness, that isn’t so particular. Only get that piece in the back on right,’ continued Andy in the same breath.

‘Well, you can’t go around with a fringe at the bottom, can you, now that you’re a rich farmer,’ objected Maglena reproachfully.--‘What is meant thereby, that God hears our prayers?’ she asked in the same admonishing tone.

‘That He, in His wisdom and goodness gives us either what we ask or what is better for us.--It’s getting almost cold, sitting like this,’ said Andy and tried to make the worn robe cover his whole body.

‘Well, you’ll have to take them then; the patch is finished, but I’ll have to fix the bottom better to-night after you’ve gone to bed. If I only knew how we could stay in this nice house!’ she continued.

‘It’s going to get warm,’ remarked Andy. ‘It looked like it around the moon last night, and then it will be awfully hard for us to get away from here in the slush; there won’t be any crust.’

‘If we only had something to eat, we’d be comfortable here in our own house.’

‘But we haven’t anything to eat.’

‘If it only were summer,’ continued Maglena.

‘But it isn’t summer yet,’ answered Andy with a gloomy expression. ‘I guess there is no other way than for us to start out again,’ he finished with a sigh.

‘There ought to be some way, when it’s so nice here.’

Maglena tore the other sleeve out of father’s old shirt briskly. She meant to sew the arm holes together and make a sort of cape.

‘The best way would be for you to take our money, the three twenty-five öre pieces, and go out now on the crust. Near here is a clearing that has just been burnt, and then there must be people that own it where you can find out where the store is that little Anna at the wedding-farm talked about.’

Andy’s face cleared.

‘Yes, and I have wooden spoons and things to trade, and then all the twenty-five öre pieces to buy food. If I find the store I can get food and we can stay here until you get us all mended up.’

‘And you’ll have time to make a lot of spoons and things to sell. If it only were time for the birch leaves to come out, we could make brooms too and carry them on the sled.’

‘When it’s time to make birch brooms, then there won’t be any sleighing,’ remarked Andy with a little laugh.

He was pleased because the trousers were whole once more, and because he knew the catechism lesson he had set out to learn, but mostly because of the thought that they could stay on under the tree and not have to go around in the settlements begging food and beds.

‘Then I’ll be off,’ he said.

Maglena rubbed his old fur cap in the snow, and scraped his coat with lumps of snow-crust. She thought he looked really fine and rich when he turned to her to say good-bye before he lifted the door-branches and went out.

‘Lucky meeting, horse and man,’ he smiled at Magnus, who was coming with a load of resinous gnarled pine roots.

‘Whoa, stop, Blackie,’ said Magnus to himself. ‘It’s a fine load, isn’t it? I thought I’d pile up the wood here south of the house where the sun can shine on it and dry it.’

Magnus pointed out the spot he had in mind.

‘That will be fine. It’s a good thing I have such a good man on the farm. Now I’m going to the mill so we’ll have bread, and I’ll have to get some potatoes to plant too.’

‘Oh, dear, we haven’t any potatoes in the house either,’ called Maglena from indoors.

‘But we haven’t a kettle to cook them in,’ answered Andy with his head in the door.

‘I’ll roast them in the ashes for dinner, and fry the herring on the coals, ’cause, of course, you’ll bring home herring too.’ The mistress came out. She stood with her hands under her apron and chatted with the master and servant.

‘If you find anything good for spoons or anything, bring it along,’ said the master. ‘Good-bye, then,’ he added and set off, half-running in the shade between the trees where the crust still bore, though it had begun to get so warm that the mistress had to shield her eyes from the sun with her hand. She went in again, but called to the servant, ‘Come in and you’ll see something beautiful.’

Magnus was heard putting the horse in the stable before he came slowly in.

‘What is it?’

‘See the sun in all the drops in the ceiling here. See how it shines red and all colors on the branches and twigs. It can’t be as beautiful as that even at the king’s.’

‘No-o, it is beautiful,’ admitted Magnus, ‘and nice and warm here by the fire.’

He stood and warmed himself, much pleased.

Golden Horn too liked the fire. She lay on the robe beside Maglena, who leaned against her.

On another corner of the robe lay the cat on softly folded front paws, and stared into the fire. She purred loudly if Maglena only turned toward her.

‘You can stay in and rest awhile now, Magnus.’

‘I guess I will,’ agreed Magnus with dignity. He tried to squeeze in on the robe where Golden Horn lay, chewing her cud.

‘Move over, Golden Horn, you have more on than I have,’ he puffed, and at last managed to get a passable corner between the goat and his sister.

‘Now I thought we’d go through the Ten Commandments, ’cause to-morrow we’re going to have a catechism party,’ said Maglena in rather a coaxing voice.

She began to realize that it was best to treat Magnus with gentleness. It worried both her and Andy that the little brother should be untaught all winter.

‘I am sure I know them,’ assured Magnus confidently.

‘No use saying that,’ said Maglena indignantly. ‘Tell me at once the second commandment.’

‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain.’

The answer came fluently; Maglena was obviously astonished. But she thought to snare him with the eighth commandment that had always troubled her.

‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’

Magnus’s eyes shone triumphantly.

‘Now the rooster will have to crow for you[13] when Andy comes back,’ praised Maglena.

[13] In Swedish A B C books, there is a picture of a rooster on the last page, and when a child has learned its lesson well, the rooster is said to crow, and certain it is that some reward is found between the pages afterwards, like a piece of candy or a cooky.

Magnus swelled with pleasure.

‘Well, you see, the catechism isn’t anything so awful for me,’ he said without any great humility. ‘I think it isn’t so easy for you,’ he added with a superior air.

Maglena felt a little guilty. But it did not occur to her to admit any inferiority in any respect.

‘How is it with the psalms?’ she went on with dignified seriousness, while she, with obvious trouble, began knitting the thumb of the mitten. ‘This one: “All the world praises the Lord.”’

‘I can’t do that,’ muttered Magnus. ‘When every other word falls like that and they follow each other so that they fall apart if a single word gets away, then I can’t remember them.’

‘But we’re going to sing that to-morrow at the catechism party, and Andy will be the minister, and we don’t want to be ashamed of one. Read it aloud twenty times, and then you’ll know it.’

Magnus really meant to follow Maglena’s advice. It was so pleasant to sit here by the fire and look up at the sun-bright drops on the walls and ceiling, and have before you a catechism party with ash-roasted potatoes and coal-fried herring.

He laid a few thick roots on the fire that flamed up brightly and warmed them. Then he sat down on the robe with his elbows on his knees, his hands under his cheeks, and the book on the ground before him.

‘All the world praises the Lord,’ he read the verse aloud over and over again.

The cat purred and purred.

Golden Horn chewed her cud.

Maglena straightened out the bright yarn. She thought to refresh herself by sewing roses on the nearly finished mitten.

The sun shone on the moss floor.

Roundabout the ‘house’ little birds were heard twittering and rustling in the trees.

Maglena sat and thought how nice everything was. Nothing could be so joyful as having their own green cottage in the woods.

Andy would certainly find his way back, too, even if it should be late in the evening when he came.

Just then both she and Magnus heard running steps, panting breaths from one who came rushing toward the tree as if pursued.

Right through the wall without looking for the door came Andy. So exhausted was he that he could not say a word, but threw himself full length on the ground. He was pale, his hair was wet with perspiration.

It took awhile before he was able to move or say a word.