CHAPTER IV

A BLEAK MORNING BOTH INSIDE AND OUT

The little girls were awake earliest of all in the morning. That is, except the Spectacle Man, Ladd-Pelle[6] as he was otherwise called when he was sober, and who made really wonderfully fine shoes.

[6] Ladd-Pelle; pronounced Ladd-Pel’le. Ladd is the name of the particular kind of shoe that the man made; his name was Per, or Peter, from which comes the nickname Pelle; so, translated, he was called ‘Shoemaker Peter.’

He had been up a long time. So surprised was he at being clear-headed so early in the day that he went about clucking to himself with pleasure.

The water for the mush was boiling in the kettle, and besides he had washed a few potatoes so that the children could have some with their salt herring.

Ladd-Pelle had not felt so light of heart in many years. He really wondered how he had come to go home the evening before, he who usually stayed over at the inn days at a time. Yes, it really was strange. Already he sat hard at work, for he had orders for many pair of shoes, enough to keep him busy both night and day. People still wanted more of him.

‘Ita-Tawie,’ Martha-Greta’s voice was heard from the straw bed. ‘Up! Tee new doll.’

‘Ita-Tawie,’ otherwise Brita-Carrie, was wide awake at once. She crept on all fours over the others, still sleeping soundly, to Martha-Greta, who too had worked her way over them all alone and then rolled over to the fire. There she had found a stick of wood which she had wrapped up in scarfs and a ragged apron, and now held up toward her sister with proud happiness. ‘Tiss her!’

Brita-Carrie pushed out her little mouth as far as she could in order to reach in through the many thicknesses to the wood itself, which sure enough received a resounding kiss.

‘Has she had any milk?’ asked Brita-Carrie eagerly.

‘Nonnin.’ Martha-Greta shook her head with a troubled expression. ‘Nonnin ’tall.’

‘Wait, I div her, like mother dave little brother.’

She put the stick of wood close to her breast, looked down at it with great tenderness, rocked slowly back and forth, and whispered, ‘Sing now, Ma’ta-G’eta, and she go to s’eep.’

‘What hat my Jetut done for me. Hennenly Tana; yet, he tended to Tana. Hennenly Tana.’

Martha-Greta was fully convinced that she sang correctly, ‘What has my Jesus done for me.’ ‘Hennenly Tana’ meant ‘heavenly Canaan.’ Any one who couldn’t understand that certainly didn’t have human understanding.

The children were all very proud that Martha-Greta, who was not two years old, could ‘say everything she wanted to say,’ really ‘talk plain.’

‘Dollie ’ants muk.’ Interpreted: ‘Dollie wants milk.’ That such food or drink was given the doll when Brita-Carrie held it to her breast did not seem to enter her mind. ‘Muk’ she must have; she, like Ata-Eta herself, must be terribly hungry and thirsty.

‘Anna-Ita up! Ata-Eta ’ants muk an’ mus.’

Anna-Lisa, who sat up in the straw bed dazed with sleep, understood at once that Martha-Greta wanted milk and mush. She looked up shame-faced. When one is among strangers, as they all were, one must ask prettily for what one wants, not demand it, no matter what it might be.

Andy was also quickly on his feet. His first thought was Golden Horn, who was not in the cottage. For it was she who had milk for the little ones.

He said good-morning to the host, who sat by the fire and drew the waxed thread through the stiff homespun, and looked as though he were alone in the cottage. Andy noticed with deep satisfaction the preparations for breakfast on the fire.

But then he went out in real fright about the goat. One could never know what had become of her when she got out in a strange place.

Andy could hardly open the door because of the awful west wind that swept in between the mountains, roaring like thousands of wild animals. The wind carried snow with it, so much snow that one could hardly hold one’s eyes open and see what was in front of one--hardly see one’s hand.

Gray Dog had crept up on the step, but with eyes and ears wide open. A good dog must be on his guard on just such stormy days when both wolves and foxes and owls might seek their way to human dwelling-places.

To-day the dog had still another reason for being suspicious.

That goat, which went and swaggered as if it were a dog, had irritated the gray dog almost into rabies when it actually went into the cottage to stay all night. A dog with a sense of honor could not be in there in such company and listen to that disgusting bleating. Now he had lain and sulked and been offended all night. Such a monster with horns, without a tail, and with the pupils of its eyes length-wise instead of round in its head, was allowed to lie indoors when such a fine old gray dog, who had protected the place night and day, and who had pulled his master out of many a danger, must lie outside. In such a storm, too, when no one ought to be able to drive out even a dog.

To think that that monster actually pleased to go into the house! And then to see it come bounding out in the morning, as confident and bold as though it had lived there always. The gray dog was so ashamed that he crept under the step, for he really could not stand and bark at any one that came _out of_ the cottage. The dog that could have acted in so topsy-turvy and ill-mannered a way has certainly not yet been created.

But it was well to have eyes and ears open to see what became of one who, unfamiliar and without a dog’s power of smell, set off outside the yard in such weather.

Gray Dog barked, shortly and with suppressed spite, almost as if he were laughing to himself.

He turned away his head, shook himself, and growled a trifle threateningly when Andy came out and began to call and make a row. Time after time the boy called the crazy name of ‘Golden Horn.’ If it had only been ‘Brownie’ or ‘Goody’ or ‘Curious,’ but ‘Golden Horn’! Andy climbed down from the step, wading in snow to his waist, and shaded blinded eyes with his arm held up in front of him.

‘Golden Horn! Little goat! Where are you?’

Andy thought of the wolves’ tracks he had seen yesterday, and remembered how much the wolf liked goat’s meat.

Not a trace of the goat in the snow. The storm roared so that Andy actually felt how his voice was drowned in the din. That was why he didn’t hear how Golden Horn bleated in answer to his calling.

For she had heard him long ago. But she thought she might as well swallow the breakfast she had found in a ramshackle old shed before she made herself known.

Sometime there must have been cattle in the shed. The withes hung down in two larger stalls, and a little row of four smaller goat stalls could be made out in one corner. It was coal black and terribly dirty in there. Golden Horn would never, except in greatest need, have been able to force herself to go in, but she had found some dried sheaves of leaves in a boxed-off corner. She even found a few stalks of hay and bran, those fine remains of flowers and leaves that fall from the grass that is cut and dried for hay, and that cattle love to eat.

Well, Andy would have to flounder around in the snow out there awhile, thought Golden Horn, and call and coax. He would not die of that. But for all that she hurried her eating so that her jaws went like a threshing machine. She no doubt had a little guilty conscience; but she remembered, too, that she had to gather milk for the children in there in the cottage.

Andy climbed through the snow up to his armpits. He had almost reached the big highway. What should he do if he did not get milk for the little girls? And how heavy and sad it would be to think that wolves had torn their fine splendid Golden Horn to pieces!

‘Ma-a-a!’ Andy thought he heard. ‘Ma-a-a-a!’

He turned quickly, and almost had Golden Horn in his arms as she came hopping and diving in the drifts.

‘Golden Horn, you mustn’t scare me like that!’ said Andy with an alarming tremble in his voice. ‘You ought to know that it is you and I who are responsible for all the little ones in there and we must keep together.’