CHAPTER XXXVIII

ALL THE SEVEN FROM THE LITTLE GRAY COTTAGE

Little Maglena now heard the same story that Andy had just heard, partly from the minister, and partly from his wife, the story of himself and his brothers and sisters. Their long journey from the mountains with the goat was known in the settlements, moving and strange as it was. The forester from Bear Heath had told it when he was down there to mark the trees to be cut in the woods of the parish. He had talked to his old friends at the parsonage about ‘his little girls’ and spoken long and often about the happiness and joy he and his wife felt at having the children.

‘You understand, Maglena, that the forester had never talked like that before, because he’d never had any children before.’

‘It was our little girls, Martha-Greta and Brita-Carrie, that became their children!’ cried Maglena. ‘Goodness gracious, are they alive?’ she continued, in her eagerness forgetting altogether her usual shyness.

‘Alive! Well, I should think so! They are well, and the sweetest, dearest little girls. Their mother has grown so well and happy and strong since they came to the house. She has woven cloth for dresses for them, red and white, and blue and white cotton dresses that she herself has sewn for holidays and every day.’

Maglena stood with her arms resting on the table, looking out of the window, her eyes shining with wonder and delight. It was as if she had just heard a fairy tale.

‘Yes, and then that dear mother has made them big aprons of coarser home-woven cloth. They wear these when they play or work. Can you guess what such little youngsters can do in the way of work?’

‘Oh, everything and anything,’ answered Maglena with such conviction that, if it had been necessary, she could have given the little ones a testimonial that they were fully capable of any household work.

‘Everything?’ repeated the minister’s wife with an amused smile that almost offended Maglena.

‘Yes, they can sweep and put wood on the fire, and rock the cradle and carry kindling wood and wash bowls and wooden spoons and--and----’

Maglena lost her breath when she came to name all the little ones’ accomplishments.

‘Aren’t they useful in the barnyard too?’

Maglena looked surprised and a little thoughtful.

‘Well, they haven’t had to be in the barnyard, the little ones. Martha-Greta hasn’t been able to get over the high thresholds either without help, she’s too little, and, besides, I’ve never wanted any help,’ she added proudly.

‘Well, now you shall hear that the little girls will be useful in the barnyard too when they’re a little bigger, for, will you believe it?--they each have a goat. The goats live in a pretty new little goat-house.’

‘I’ve never heard anything like it! I wonder what the goats there are named?’ asked Maglena. Her eyes sparkled.

‘You shall hear that too. The forester talked about that quite particularly. One was named Gold--Gold--what was it now?’

‘Golden Horn, of course,’ enlightened Maglena. ‘Andy, the goat is named Golden Horn like ours.’

Maglena could not stand still. She hopped backward and forward and clasped her hands, twisted and turned to look at Andy, at the lovely lady who smiled so gently and understandingly at her, and who now helped her to ask what the other goat was named.

‘The other is called White Tongue.’

‘Then she has two white tongues under her nose instead of a beard. That’s a good mark for milking goats, that is,’ remarked Maglena with an experienced dairymaid’s sure air.

‘And then, you must know, the little girls have two dolls. They are so nice that they have porcelain heads with thick porcelain braids, although they are tiny babies and lie in a little cradle.’

‘And I know that they sing a cradle-song, “hennenly Tana.”’

Maglena nearly burst into tears at the last words.

The minister’s wife hastened to add:

‘Anna-Lisa and Maglena are their names, those pretty babies.’

‘Andy, do you hear, how wonderful those little girls are?’

‘And what’s more. They have made themselves three boys out of sticks of wood, and dressed them, and they call them Andy, Per-Erik, and Magnus. Have you ever heard anything like it?’

Maglena turned silently toward her brother with a face that glowed with rapture.

He looked at her just as silently and meaningly. Happiness and contentment shone out of his eyes too.

‘You shall hear even more that you’ll like.’

‘Can the little girls sew roses on mittens, maybe?’

‘I don’t think so, and now the story about the little girls is at an end. But now I want to tell you that the forester had also been at a big farm.’

‘Maybe at the one where we left Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik?’ interrupted Maglena, full of expectation.

‘You’ve guessed right. You may be sure that Anna-Lisa is like the daughter of the house there. She has a little green spinning-wheel of her own. When the forester came into the big kitchen in the evening, Anna-Lisa sat there spinning flax on her little spinning-wheel, while the mistress was spinning wool for winter clothes for her husband and all three children. A fire burned in the fireplace. Two little boys----’

‘And they were--oh, I know they were Per-Erik and little Karl,’ interrupted Maglena and gave a jump of eagerness.

‘I almost think they were so named. They came in with each an armful of dry wood that they threw on the fire so that the room became so light and bright. They sang together so happily, the mistress and Anna-Lisa and then a maid who was spinning too.’

‘That was Brita.’

‘I can’t remember what they sang. It was something about a goatherd.’

‘And the king took the goatherd so brown, And made her his queen with a crown.’

‘Andy, _that_ was the song they sang; it is sixteen stanzas long, and it’s such a jolly and funny song.’

‘That was it exactly! Well, you may be sure that the forester was happy when he recognized Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik. They were so pleased with the girl at the farm that they had given her a little blue churn so she could churn butter Saturdays. And down in the barnyard she had a whole row of goats to take care of. They stood in small stalls and ate dry leaves that she put in the mangers for them before she milked them. The biggest and finest goat there too was named Golden Horn. Wasn’t that strange? The little kid beside her was called Motherlike. Do you know why?’

‘Because he was like his mother of course,’ answered Maglena, again cheerful and alert.

‘He had been out with Per-Erik and the other little boy too, the forester. They had built a little sawmill down by a stream that is full in the spring. The wheels had turned with such force that it was a joy to see it.’

‘Yes, Per-Erik always liked to build things in the water,’ smiled Maglena, proud and pleased. ‘And he was always after father to play, when he was well, before he died.’

‘The master had made a little violin for the boys too,’ continued the minister’s wife, ‘and a little cart to carry wood in, and little rakes so that they could be along like real men when they raked the fields after haying, and help keep the yard nice and clean.’

‘Per-Erik is well off now,’ said Maglena, not without a certain regret in her voice.

‘And do you know, they had two colts in the stable there. Per-Erik, who stood in high favor with the master because he is a dear boy who has put life into his own boy, let him have his way, and one of the colts is named Andy and the other Magnus.’

‘Andy, have you ever in the world heard the like? But I suppose he was terribly washed and combed, wasn’t he?’ added Maglena, cautiously, almost with sympathy in her voice.

‘That you may be sure of. The forester said that he had never seen such shiny-faced children as those three at the farm.’

Maglena and Andy smiled understandingly at one another.

‘Well, now the story about Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik is over. But now we come to something that perhaps you don’t remember; as much as you have wandered about and as many places as you have been in, perhaps you have altogether forgotten some one who made shoes?’

‘Oh, Andy! The Spectacle Man!’ Maglena laughed aloud in joy. ‘He lives in a little gray house. Is he alive? Never have I heard anything so wonderful!’

‘You dear little warm-hearted child.’ The lovely lady smiled at Maglena. All the while she followed with the liveliest interest and eagerness the strange child’s expressions. The child was to be her own, and every word, every cadence of her voice had a meaning for her.

‘Yes, he is said to live in a little gray house, that shoemaker. Once in a bad snowstorm this winter, when the wolves crept about in the woods----’ continued the lady.

‘There _wasn’t_ any snowstorm, but it came,’ interrupted Andy earnestly.

‘The wolves didn’t come either, ’cause mother asked God to follow us all the time; you know that, Andy,’ came from Maglena.

‘I haven’t said anything else either,’ remarked Andy patiently. ‘But we were the ones that came there.’

‘Does he still live in the little gray cottage below the mountains, the Spec--Spec-- Andy, what was his name for real people?’

Maglena turned again with burning eagerness toward her who had so much to tell that was remarkable.

Andy looked up a second from his work. He was cutting kindling wood.

‘Ladd-Pelle was his name.’

‘Well, one evening there came seven small children to this Ladd-Pelle, quite hungry.’

‘Terribly,’ sighed Maglena.

‘But we had had food earlier that day, remember that, girl,’ came Andy’s earnest voice.

‘They were pretty tired too, I imagine, those children,’ continued the minister’s wife, who had no objection to the children’s forgetting their shyness and saying what they thought, so that she could learn to know them better.

‘Not so very,’ said Maglena, influenced by her brother’s words. ‘It was mostly our legs that were tired, and our feet that were blistered. But we weren’t tired ourselves when we came into the house. No-o-o, ’cause we were scared.’

Maglena stared before her. She smiled when she thought that they had been afraid of _that_ man in the little gray house. So little had they known about what there was to be afraid of.

‘They had a goat along.’

‘Golden Horn, of course,’ nodded Maglena, deeply interested in the story.

‘The children had had to stay over because of the snowstorm, and they had made the house so neat, washed windows, scrubbed, spread out rag carpets, whitewashed the fireplace.’

‘It was Anna-Lisa who thought of that,’ announced Andy.

‘Yes, because she couldn’t stand dirt, Anna-Lisa, and there weren’t any women-folk in the house, so it was quite awful in the room.’

‘But we got lots of food, and a place to sleep too, all of us and Golden Horn, remember that, girl!’

‘Have I said that I’ve forgotten all that!’ resented Maglena eagerly. ‘It can’t be nice where there aren’t any women-folk, so that’s nothing to be surprised at.’

‘No, no,’ agreed Andy, quite convinced that his sister was right, though that point of view was not flattering to him, since he wasn’t ‘women-folk.’

‘Tell them about the flower in the window, Octavia.’

‘That’s true! Ladd-Pelle had a cactus in a fine pot in his window.’

‘Oh, my sweet little cactus, that I carried in the knapsack and loved so that we had it with us that first day!’

‘Just that cactus, of course. They say that the window at Ladd-Pelle’s is always shining now, so that the cactus will thrive, you see. When the window was clear, Ladd-Pelle himself saw how dreary the house looked inside and in all the corners. So now he keeps the whole house nice with a clean floor and white fireplace, even without women-folk.’

‘Do you hear, Maglena!’ said Andy in an almost solemn tone of voice.

Maglena ‘heard’ as she stood with a look at the same time proud and crushed.

‘But now you shall hear something that is even more wonderful. Well, Andy has heard it before.’

Maglena tramped about and twisted, red and eager. Still more wonderful than what she had already heard!

‘Can you imagine, Maglena, _he has bought a goat_, a big fine goat, and a good milker, that the forester bought for him down in Smaland, where they still have fine goats.’

‘And her name is Golden Horn, as sure as I stand here!’ screamed Maglena, altogether beside herself with delight. ‘He wanted to buy our Golden Horn, and he said that if you always had milk to cook with and for your coffee, you wouldn’t have to drink all the time. So you see, Andy, it was a good thing after all that you took us away. You’ve blamed yourself and been sorry sometimes that you took us and Golden Horn with you out into the country. But now see how good it was. You needn’t think that Pelle would have thought of keeping the house clean if he hadn’t seen our Golden Horn.’

‘Well, if Golden Horn wasn’t exactly the cause of keeping the house clean, she had a reason for being, anyway,’ smiled the minister’s wife. ‘You were pretty short-sighted, Andy,’ she added earnestly, ‘if you didn’t realize that it was a good thing in many ways that you left the little gray house when it was empty. Not only for all of you. Children who have learned what is right and wrong, from father and mother, carry _blessings with them_ wherever they go in the world.’

‘It came over me just once in a while, when the little ones suffered, that I had been foolish,’ Andy excused himself, ashamed and depressed, as happy and grateful as he was. ‘It seemed that I had been so stupid, and that I had dragged them into something that I couldn’t help them out of. But now everything is fine. I don’t have to worry about Maglena either now.’

Maglena’s anxious frightened look came back at Andy’s words.

‘Sylvia and you shall come up here in the summer,’ said the fine lady, ‘or else Andy will come down to us.’

Maglena bowed her head. All light had disappeared from her face, which had smiled and beamed with happiness a moment before.

‘My dear little child,’ said the foster-mother and drew Maglena gently toward her. ‘Andy will have many sisters here, and foster-brother too. My little Sylvia is all alone without any little sister.’

‘Maybe mother has sent me to her, like when we went in to Ladd-Pelle,’ murmured Maglena to herself. A deeply thoughtful look had come over her; she looked inquiringly up into the fine lady’s eyes, who no longer seemed only ‘fine’ to her, but also so mild and gentle. Maglena was suddenly certain that mother had sent her to be a sister to the little one who had no sister. So she didn’t resist any more or hold herself as stiff as a pin, but cuddled, soft in body and spirit, into the arms that opened to take her.

Father and mother and home and sister were therefore found also for Maglena, who had stood alone, the last of the seven poor little ones, who, in a year of famine, deserted, without father or mother, had left the little gray house one bitterly cold winter morning when the fire on the hearth had gone out.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.