CHAPTER XXIX

WHEN MAGNUS WAS LEFT ALONE

The farms lay so close together thus far down in the settlements that Andy and Maglena, who were now without Magnus, began to long for the woods where they thought they could live on berries instead of having to go to strange farms every day and stand as beggars at the door.

It had not grown easier to stand at a door and wait, often both long and well before any one bothered to greet them even, or to help them.

The children had traded whisks and egg-beaters and wooden spoons for food, or had been given a coin for them. But one couldn’t do much when one went from door to door, and had no definite place to work.

It seemed empty and lonely without Magnus and Golden Horn. Maglena could scarcely bear to remember even now how sad she had felt when she had, for the last time, brushed Golden Horn’s coat so that it was soft and glossy. She had polished the goat’s horns with a woolen rag, had combed her beard; and she had caressed and talked to Golden Horn--had thanked her for all she had been to her and to her brothers and sisters during the hard, cold, and snowy winter. Never, never would Maglena forget Golden Horn, she promised solemnly; even if she rose so high that she came to the king, she’d still remember Golden Horn.

And Golden Horn was tenderness and understanding itself.

Magnus would have thought that she laughed ‘he-he-he’ to cheer them up. For she bleated so gently. It was as if she had had her own little kid before her. She nudged Maglena with her nose, and licked the inside of her hands. Golden Horn understood clearly that a parting was at hand.

Andy had found it hard, too, with Magnus, who, with Golden Horn, went with them a bit down the road. He must once again remind the little brother of everything mother wanted them to remember. Andy was so worried because Magnus still stumbled over ‘Thy will be done’ in ‘Our Father.’

Magnus had to repeat the whole prayer three times. At last it went fluently, at least for this time.

‘For you see, Magnus,’ assured Andy seriously, ‘mother said every one should know that prayer, both big and little, read it and really know it by heart so as to fly up to heaven more easily, and sort of read open the door to heaven every day, you know, boy. And then mother said that some time _every one in the whole world_ will fly up to God through that prayer, both rich and poor. It is as if we must learn the way there till the time when we really go there. God knows your voice and then you aren’t strange to Him, and can go right into heaven to God as mother did when she died.’

‘You don’t have to worry,’ said Magnus sullenly. ‘I didn’t stumble once this last time, and I guess I can remember what mother said just as well as you can. I remember her and the little gray house, and I’d rather be there than any other place, if I only had her and Golden Horn there.’

With this tender and delicate assurance at the moment of parting, Magnus turned to go back, with Golden Horn, to the sawmill and the pretty little house.

He hadn’t any great desire either to have Andy and Maglena see the tears that, to his great indignation and astonishment, rushed to his eyes. Since he was quite sure that he felt no regret in parting from his brother and sister, he thought the tears had no business in coming at all. With his hand clasping one of Golden Horn’s horns, he went now without even shaking hands or saying a word of farewell.

Maglena stood nonplussed. It seemed like a bad dream that both of them, Golden Horn and Magnus, should now be far away from her. It mustn’t be. Not like this, so suddenly. She must keep them a little while longer. And Magnus must have some souvenir of her, so that he would never forget his sister and her warnings. Maglena took the knapsack from Andy’s shoulders quickly and with trembling hands. With a practiced hand she reached down to the very bottom of it.

‘The brass comb!’ Magnus should have from her the very brass comb itself to keep himself nice on the outside, just as Andy had given him that with which to keep himself nice on the inside.

‘Magnus!’ called Maglena. ‘Boy, wait!’

Magnus slowed down without turning around.

He started with aversion when Maglena, who had run after him, stopped short and thrust the comb past his ear, and past his nose, which it nearly scraped.

The hated brass comb gleamed in the sun right before his eyes. Magnus was furious with a vengeance, and Maglena literally jumped backward when he turned a tear-drenched face with actually fiery eyes toward her. He jerked the comb away from her and banged it down in the road.

‘I believe you want to kill me with that truck! I’ve gone out to strangers to get away from that cat-claw and then you come galloping after me with it. Take the comb yourself, and comb out your curls so that your hair can be smooth for once like other people’s. Golden Horn and I can get along all right.’

With that Magnus set off with Golden Horn, who turned and twisted to get away in order to be caressed and petted a bit by Maglena. She, who had had to bend down to pick up the comb, stood as if petrified.

Golden Horn and Magnus melted away in the dust of the road, and became smaller and smaller. They disappeared behind a pile of boards without turning around, which, for the goat, would have been rather hard, considering the steady hold with which Magnus held her head.

Perhaps Maglena would have wondered less and felt lighter of heart if she had seen how Magnus stopped behind the pile of boards and peeped out through the cracks after her and Andy as long as he could see them. She would have been on the verge of tears if she had seen him bend down over Golden Horn and heard his warm assurances to the goat:

‘Do you know, Golden Horn, now I’ll call you both Andy and Maglena. I’ll call you Andy in the evenings when it seems that I can’t say “Our Father”; and Maglena in the mornings when I don’t want to comb myself. I was so awfully mad, I don’t know why; and I’m crying now, I don’t know why either, when I’m mad at Maglena. The tears run whether I want them to or not. See, now Andy and Maglena are going down the hill. Now I see only the red striped shawl on Maglena’s head, and now only Andy’s cap. Now they are gone. Come, now, little Andy, sweet Maglena, we have other things to do besides standing here looking at something that isn’t here.’

Magnus had not turned around before Kristina, who longed for the boy from her home parish, and the goat, and understood that the little one felt sad, was beside him. She had sandwiches with her in a little basket which contained even some bits of bread for Golden Horn.