CHAPTER XXXII

UP AT A DAIRY FARM

Andy and Maglena stood still on the stone. They began to scream, and call, and to try to yodel themselves, so cheered were they by the beautiful sounds that echoed through the woods in ringing, rolling tones.

But when voices were heard just beside them, Maglena became painfully shy again. She crept down on the stone behind Andy. In the bushes she glimpsed a red striped headcloth and a blue cotton skirt. Soon she heard a kind, sympathetic voice call, ‘But, children, how did you get up there?’

‘And how in the world are you going to get down?’ added another voice, a child’s voice.

Maglena sat up.

‘Oh, please come down,’ called the little girl, who stood near the stone, in a pleading voice. She was well dressed, in a hand-woven blue-striped hempen cloth dress, an apron of white and red dotted printed calico, and, what roused doubt and discomfort in Maglena’s heart, she wore a _hat_ with a blue ribbon around the crown. Two thick light braids were rolled up and fastened with dark blue bows at the ears. It was awfully hard to come down among such fine people.

But Andy drove her on. He worked himself down in front of her and finally got her down.

When once down, Maglena felt happy and safe, as if she had reached dry land after a shipwreck.

Sara, who yodeled so beautifully, looked kind and good. She had a little knapsack on her back. She swung this off and brought forth sandwiches and goats’-milk cheese and butter for supper.

She told the children that she was a dairymaid at the minister’s dairy farm; that Elsa was the minister’s eldest daughter, who had insisted on coming with her to the woods to look for little Golden Star, who hadn’t come home with the other cattle the evening before. They were afraid that a bear had killed her, because a young bear had been seen in the woods, and you never knew if he’d be content with blueberries or had already tasted blood.

‘It was my cow,’ said Elsa. ‘I’ve milked her every day since we came up here, and she licked me and ran after me wherever I went. I miss Golden Star terribly.’

‘Old Bruin hasn’t killed her yet, but he was after her,’ said Andy with a cocksure air. ‘He only scared her. She ran that way. There is a marsh there, so maybe she’s lying down there. But, anyway, we have time to get her up again ’cause she just got there.’

The sound of a horn came trilling from the direction of the marsh.

‘Oh, gracious, Karl has found Golden Star!’ cried Sara, her cheeks red, radiant with joy. She threw the knapsack on her back and answered with a yodeling that rang through the woods. Then she ran off in her birch-bark shoes, so quickly, so lightly, that the children had trouble in following her.

A cow bellowed wildly and tremblingly.

When the children reached the marsh, they saw Golden Star standing there dripping wet, her otherwise red and white skin gray with mud.

Karl, who worked the minister’s farm, and Sara, who had arrived a little before them, just in time to help get the cow up out of the marsh before her head sank into the thick water, stood beside her, petting her and chattering encouragingly. Sara thanked Karl as if he had saved the cow, though Elsa assured her that Andy and Maglena alone had done it. She confided to her new friends that Sara was so fond of Karl that there wasn’t anything in the world she didn’t believe he could do. Annika, their last dairymaid, had been just like that with Abraham before, and now they were married.

Karl had just come up to the dairy farm. He was going to carry home the butter and cheese on horseback, on Tuesday, when the cows were to be driven home for the haying, but he didn’t have to come on Saturday for that! No, that was just for Sara’s sake!

Elsa held Maglena’s hand. Andy too walked at her side when they could walk that way in the woods and didn’t have to climb over pebbly paths, jump on slippery stones in the brooks, or walk balancing themselves with outstretched arms and tongues hanging halfway out when they crossed wet narrow logs that were thrown over the swaying marsh’s many treacherous pools.

Smoke was coming from the chimney when the party, with the cow, finally reached the farm. And it was already quite late at night, though as light as a clear summer day. Only so strangely quiet, since all the birds, except the cuckoo and thrush, were asleep. Cow-bells and yodeling and horns were no longer heard from the woods. The little pool that gleamed below the pasture lay calm, as if it had fallen asleep, covered with a lovely veil of mist.

But what a rumpus when Golden Star, who had caused so much worry, was seen in the group of known and unknown people. The cow ran through the open gate, straight to the barn door, followed by Sara.

Andy and Maglena stopped, terrified. Those must be fairies up there at the house. Five children, queerly clad, as if dressed only in a chemise, stood on a high flat stone just outside the door, hair hanging loosely about them, barefooted and barelegged. They held each other’s hands, swung their arms slowly, and sang:

‘Wagtail, robin, fallowfinch, thrush, follow one another.’

Of course Andy and Maglena could not be expected to know that the children there were singing to scare away trolls and wolves from the farm and the cattle, and that they made up different songs every evening, or that they had to be serious, and neither talk nor laugh while they sang.

They had to finish the song, though their eyes burned with wonder and curiosity when they saw the two wandering children down at the gate.

‘Follow one another,’ they finished the song, which Angela had made up this time, and which was pretty and easy to sing. But now they jumped down like wild animals from the stone and streaked down to the gate.

If the bear hadn’t been in the woods, it is a question whether Maglena, and even Andy, hadn’t fled back at once at the sight.

‘Now we are wild swans!’ shrieked the strange white fairies, ‘and now we’ll turn you into swans too.’

‘Soon the sun will come up, and then we’ll fly away to Egypt,’ one half sang. She had red cheeks and eyes that sparkled, and hair as long and thick as a horse’s mane.

‘There are princesses there with curly hair, who eat on golden plates,’ trilled another, a pretty dainty girl with a red belt about her chemise, and with curly hair that flew about her head as she danced.

‘We’ll fly over the Mediterranean Sea, and take you with us, if only we don’t drown in the sea,’ murmured another red-cheeked girl with a black mane of hair and big eyes.

‘Plump down--crash! Sea and splash!’ screamed another little one. She stood in a water puddle, and jumped up and down so that the mud flew about her and colored her feet and legs gray.

‘You sing and make up something too, Sylvia, otherwise you aren’t a swan,’ she continued.

‘I can’t do anything,’ answered Sylvia, a dainty little girl who looked like a lovely doll. ‘You make up something for me, Ingegard, because I only know the songs big people sing, sort of fancy songs, and they don’t sound pretty here.’

‘No, swans don’t sing that kind,’ admitted Ingegard, the girl with the thick mane and the kind eyes.

‘Kulleri toova,’

sang Ingegard for Sylvia, slowly and sadly as a goatherd would sing it.

‘Twelve men in a wood, Twelve men are they, Twelve swords have they, Me they want to lure away, Kulleri toova.’

‘Now we’ll dance around you nine times against the sun, and then you’ll be wild swans too,’ cried Viva, who came scuttling up from the mud puddle.

They made a ring around the mountain children, almost petrified with alarm and wonder. They danced, keeping time with violently swinging arms, holding one another tightly.

‘Ptroo, vall! Ptroo, vall! Up on a dairy farm There are goats, there are fays, And little girls and boys to play with.’

Andy and Maglena did not look at that moment like ‘little girls and boys,’ to ‘play’ with. They stood blushing, with downcast eyes, and really felt more like crying than dancing.

Elsa came running and rescued them.

‘There is food and coffee ready in the house!’

She drew Andy with her. Ingegard and Sylvia took Maglena between them and ran across the pasture up toward the house.

Sara stood in the cool, half-dark milk-room, and poured the milk into bowls. The door out into the big room stood open. A fireplace filled the corner near the door. A fire burned brightly, though it was a light warm summer night. But potatoes had been boiled over it, and the coffee for the cow-seekers.

Sara was quite content because she did not have to milk the cows now in the middle of the night. She had been much surprised to find all the cows milked, except Rose-on-the-Nose. That cow kicked and refused to give her milk when only youngsters came clattering with milk pail and stool, and tried.

Ingegard explained that they couldn’t bear to hear the cows mooing in misery because of too much milk. So they had milked.