CHAPTER V

ALL HANDS ON DECK

The uneasiness and troubled spirits in the cottage changed to real happiness when Andy and Golden Horn came in again. Anna-Lisa got more than a quart of foamy warm milk from the goat. It was enough for the mush and even to add to the water gruel. It seemed as though it was a regular party.

But the way it looked in the strange cottage! Old ragged shoes that Pelle was to mend thrown all over the floor; the straw scattered. If the blessed fire had not burned on the hearth and lighted up the room, darkness would have reigned indoors all day, for the inside of the window was gray-black with dirt, and now the snow fastened itself outside as well.

Andy and Anna-Lisa set to work to clean things up a bit.

Maglena searched out the brass comb in the knapsack. It was her duty to-day to comb the hair of the little ones, who gave howl after howl under her zealous efforts to make curly hair look sleek and straight hair lie flat.

Then there were sore chilled toes and chafed little heels to be looked after. A small birch-bark box was taken out of the knapsack. It was full of homemade soft soap, the welcome gift of a neighbor at home.

It was great fun to splash and wash their feet with soft soap and warm water. In spite of Anna-Lisa’s warnings, the children splashed so violently that she deemed it best to soak the whole floor and, first as last, to scrub it.

Andy, Maglena, and she took each a scrubbing broom. They sprinkled sand over the floor, already flushed with warm water, put bare feet on the brooms, and rubbed so hard that the splinters flew from the worn darkened wood.

The floor had evidently not been washed in years, or since ‘they all’ had gone from the cottage and left the poor lame old man alone.

The little girls sat up in the old man’s bed and made dolls out of sticks of wood and splinters. The little boys washed the wooden bowls and wooden spoons and scraped the mush kettle with an ear-splitting din.

Ladd-Pelle was actually frightened at the number of ragged shoes the children threw over to him at the fireplace. But he felt quite content when he thought how welcome he would be when he came with them all finished. Otherwise it was well known that Ladd-Pelle would rather drink than work.

He stood up painfully, put the coffee-pot on the fire, and blinked smilingly into the room.

‘Shall we have a cup of coffee, eh?--Good gracious,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘the girl actually had sense enough herself to wash the window.’

The children smiled at him, warm and rosy, as if they had been fighting. The little girls sang their babies to sleep with soft, sweetly ringing ‘Hennenly Tana.’

Magnus and Per-Erik pounded and scratched with knives and scrapers in the iron kettle, laughing and bellowing:

‘Neptune he plays in the blue, blue waves!’

Not enough with that. They took up a verse that Andy did not like because it seemed to be about him:

‘Andy was a cheerful fellow, Busy as two ants, or more; Quick was he as the quickest man, And strong as any four.’

It seemed to be making fun of him, and he became angry and said they might hit on a better song. And, besides, they needn’t scrape a hole in the bottom of a stranger’s kettle.

‘The iron kettle will hold all right,’ Pelle intervened. ‘It’s so pleasant to hear the children sing. They have never done that before. Both the woman and the children quarreled all the time before they went to America, and there I didn’t want to go. Well, there is such a storm to-day that you’ll have to stay here, for you couldn’t even get to the main road before you’d be buried in all this snow. But I don’t have much to treat on, except spoiled flour for the mush, and herring, and then coffee.’

‘Isn’t that enough?’ said Andy, as he straightened up. He had been bending over, scraping the floor with birch-bark to make it white and dry after the scrubbing.

‘We think it is so comfortable to stay here,’ added Maglena. ‘When we get it ever so little cleaned up here, it will be almost like it was at home, only there we had flowers in the window.’

‘Oh, my goodness!’ continued Maglena. She actually started. ‘I brought the cactus with me in the knapsack.’

She ran to the knapsack which hung on a hook near the fire, dug among the stuff they had gathered together there, and got hold of a big sort of horn, wrapped up in a scarf.

‘See! It’s still alive, think of it, the dear beautiful little cactus! The earth is left too. Please give me a birch-bark box to put it in.’

Pelle pointed to where they were.

And Maglena put into one the rumpled plant, which then hardly gave reason for the description ‘fine and pretty.’

She whispered eagerly a moment with the older brother and sister. Shyly, with a solemn expression, she then went up to the host.

Maglena asked with a trembling voice if he would be so good as to accept her sweet little cactus. The school-teacher had given it to her, and there would be beautiful flowers on it, fiery red, and bigger than a coffee-cup. But it had to be where the sun could shine on it through the window--and it needed water every day.

Ladd-Pelle certainly did not know much about flowers. This one he thought looked more like a beaver’s tail with sharp little needles on it. But he did know enough to understand that the girl was giving away something she prized very highly, so he raised his hand, though he had no cap on to take off, and held out his hand to thank her.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Maglena, as royally condescending as though she had given away a whole flower garden.

‘I don’t know at all what we’re going to do, ’cause I’m altogether out of bread,’ wondered Pelle and pushed his glasses to the back of his head. ‘You see, I didn’t use to bother very much about what I ate. That was silly, but it’s true.’

‘If you only have flour, then we can bake,’ said Anna-Lisa airily. ‘We can heat up the oven.’

‘Well, I do have flour, but it is spoiled, so I don’t know that you can make bread of it.’

‘It was worse for us to make bread last winter and this year, when we had to mix bark and straw in the dough,’ said Anna-Lisa eagerly. ‘Andy,’ she went on, ‘go after wood and heat up the oven. I saw a kneading-trough in the cupboard awhile ago, that I’ll get. And you, Maglena, take the kettle from the boys and put it over the fire, and I’ll put water in it for the dough. It’s a good thing we have chalk here, so we can whitewash the fireplace after we’ve baked.’

‘But,’ continued Anna-Lisa in a troubled voice, ‘it is too bad we haven’t any old carpets to put on the clean floor.’

‘So that’s the way of it, that we are to live like fine folk. Well, go into the little room and bring out the carpets that are there. Take the sheepskin, too, so we can put it over the straw in the corner. Why, it’s going to be just like Christmas. Yes, better, for that matter. I haven’t kept much track of Christmas lately. Come, now, boys, and I’ll show you how to make shoes.’

Magnus and Per-Erik were given waxed thread, bits of homespun, and awls. It was wonderful beyond words to pull the thread high in the air, force the awl through the hard cloth and leather, and instantly feel like accomplished shoemakers.

The fire was soon burning in the oven. Anna-Lisa and Maglena struggled with kneading the dough, and carving out thin cakes on the table.

Andy was responsible for the oven. He took the cakes of bread that the sisters rolled out, pricking them with a pricker made of hen’s feathers fastened together, which made the cakes thick with holes. Then he pushed the cakes into the blazing oven and baked them one at a time near the oven door, where the hearth was newly swept. He had to watch carefully to turn and twist the cakes with the wooden baking-spade so that they would not burn.

The little girls were, of course, included in the baking activities. They had their own baking-table on a not too clean wooden chair. The dolls slept with their wooden heads on the dirty pillow-case which was going to be in the wash before evening.

Altogether there was a hubbub and rumpus in the cottage, life and industry.

Dinner must be made, too.

Pelle came with a suggestion to make pea pancakes in the warm oven. He had pork grease in a crock, so it would be a fine dinner with the fresh bread. It was gray, of course, and hard, and so tough that one could almost pull out one’s teeth with it, but in spite of that boundlessly good, as bread generally is when the children have baked it themselves.

Golden Horn went out and found food as she had before. Afterwards she had remains indoors too. Then she gave milk in quantities. Pelle had been used to other things. Brandy had most often taken the place of both food and drink here.