What Happened To Inger Johanne Part 16

"Never, never!"

She didn't know how she got home, she told us later, only she had felt as if she were walking on air, she was so happy.

"And I didn't know enough to thank any one either. I was as if I had clean gone out of my wits!"

The first few nights that the clock hung on the wall at Henrik-hut, Oleana did not have much sleep, for every time the clock struck, she awoke and called down blessings on all the guests at Goodfields.

"Everything goes by the clock with us now," said Oleana. "It's nothing at all to do the work at Henrik-hut when you have a clock."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock."--_Page 183._]

When the dark winter comes, when it snows and blows and the roads are blocked, how pleasant it will be to think that Oleana Henrik-hut, away up in the forest above Goodfields, has a clock ticking and ticking, and striking the hours; and that she does not need now to get up in the cold, dark nights, breathe upon the frosted panes and peep up at the stars to find out the time!

CHAPTER XIV

A TRIP TO GOODFIELDS SAETER

Mother Goodfields had made us a regular promise,--and shaken hands on it,--that we should go to the saeter some time during the summer.

Goodfields saeter lay about fourteen miles west in the mountains. Every day I reminded Mother Goodfields of her promise so that she should not forget it, you see. For it often seems to me that grown-up people forget very easily.

We had decided beforehand that it was to be Petter Kloed, Karsten, Andrine, and I who should go.

None of the grown-ups would join us. Mrs. Proet said she should have to be well paid to go, and really, such fine, fashionable ladies as she aren't fit for a saeter anyway. Miss Mangelsen was afraid there would be fleas, and Miss Melby was afraid that she being so stout, the boat we had to cross the mountain lake in would not be strong enough to bear her. Miss Jordan had been at a hundred saeters, she said, and the only difference among them was that one was a little dirtier than another; and that degree of difference she wouldn't bother herself to see, she said. Mrs. Kloed is so nervous she never dares do anything. So at last there were none to go but Petter, Karsten, Andrine, and myself, as I have said.

Karsten had taken it into his head that at saeters there were always bears, and that cream at saeters was always exactly an inch thick; and bears and inch-thick cream were what he wanted to see. Petter Kloed wished to get hold of certain mountain flowers that he could cla.s.sify.

Such botany I will have nothing to do with. I smell the flowers and think they are charming, but I don't care a b.u.t.ton which cla.s.s they belong to, not I! As for going to the saeter, Andrine and I wanted to go just for the fun of going.

Well, one day in August, Olsen, the farm-boy, and Trond Oppistuen were going to the saeter to cut hay. If we wished, we were welcome to go along with them.

If we wished! Hurrah!

The next morning off we went. The lunch, and Andrine, and I, and Karsten, and Petter Kloed were in a wagon, and Trond and Olsen walked alongside with their scythes and rakes on their shoulders.

Far, far up the mountain we were to go--away up where the trees looked no taller than half a pin's length, and the thin light air was white and shining; up there and then far along to the west.

Olsen was red-haired and freckled, small and wiry. He kept step with the horse the whole way, but Trond lagged behind us down the slope.

We all sang, each our own tune, as we climbed. The air was clear, oh! so clear! The farms in the valley grew smaller and smaller, and the birch trees we pa.s.sed were little and stunted.

Whenever Petter Kloed jumped out of the wagon after a flower or anything, we whipped the horse so as to get as far ahead of him as possible; Petter is as lazy as a log and hates to walk a step, so it was good enough for him.

Any boy with more grown-up, mannish airs than Petter Kloed puts on could not be found the world over. He wears long trousers and has been in the theatre a thousand times, he says; he smokes cigarettes too; and, always, about everything, no matter what it is, he says, pooh! he has seen that before; so it seems as if there were nothing left that could amuse him. Andrine admires him sometimes, I know that very well, but such silly puppies can go or stay for all I care. However, it was jolly to have him with us on the saeter trip,--just for the fun of teasing him, you know.

Karsten and Petter disputed the whole time as to how high we were in the air and how high up it was possible to breathe. At last they got all the way to the moon and Jupiter.

"I'll bet you anything you choose that Jupiter has air that people could breathe," said Karsten.

"That's just the kind of thing such a cabbage-head as you would bet on,"

said Petter Kloed.

At that--only think! Karsten pitched into Petter and then they began to fight in the back of the wagon.

"Are you Tartars both of you?" said I, and took a tight grip in the back of Karsten's jacket. "Don't you jump out of your skin now! If you fly at people this way as you are always doing, you shall trot back to Goodfields alone!"

"He--he is just as much of a cabbage-head as I am," mumbled Karsten, but he didn't dare to say another word, for after all, he has to respect me, you see.

Then I suggested that we should eat some of our luncheon. It's so pleasant to eat out-of-doors!

We were high, high up on the mountain, where we could see nothing but forests and mountains, a whole sea of dark, thick pine forests, and just mountains and mountains and mountains. There we drank toasts to Norway, to the summer, and to each other, and sang: "_Ja, vi elsker dette landet_," our national song, you know, and had an awfully jolly time.

But up there it was so still, so still! Nothing but gray-brown moor and dwarf birches, and willows and ice-cold mountain brooks. Far over across the moor we could see the road like a narrow gray ribbon in the monotonous brown. Far west were the snow-capped peaks, sharp, jagged and blue, and with great snow-drifts. It was very beautiful, unspeakably strange and still. We all grew silent.

"Ugh! I wouldn't be alone here for a good deal," said Andrine.

"I would just as soon be here in pitch darkness--if I only had my knife with me," said Karsten.

At that instant a ptarmigan flew up right at the side of the road, and Karsten came near falling backwards out of the cart and measuring his length on the ground.

You may be sure we all made fun of him then.

"He would like to be alone on the mountain, he would! And yet he tumbles over in fright at a ptarmigan!"

"If you can stand like a lamp-post in a cart that wobbles the way this rickety old cart does, I'll cover you with gold," said Karsten, offended.

That's the way we kept on. We quarreled and had a jolly time.

All at once a flock of goats came scrambling down the road as scared as if their lives were in danger. And we all wished that we might see a bear. Can you think of anything more exciting than to meet a bear on the road?

Petter Kloed would just go very quietly to him and scratch his back. He had done that a hundred times in the menagerie, he said. For if you just approached a bear in the right way it was a very good-natured beast, said Petter Kloed, as he lit a cigarette back there in the cart.

Karsten would rather wrestle with the bear and strangle him; for if any one wanted to see a muscle that was a stunner, they could just look here; and Karsten turned up his jacket sleeves while we all examined his muscle.

The road was unspeakably long, however. The horse jogged on and on but we didn't seem to get a bit farther. After we had eaten all the luncheon, I thought that never in the world would this road come to an end. When we asked Olsen how much farther we had to go, he would only say, "Far away there--and far away there." All I could think of was the fairy tale about the prince who had to go beyond the mountain into the blue. Andrine got drowsy and wanted to sleep, and I had to take Karsten in front with us; for, strangely enough, the longer we rode the less room there was for Karsten's and Petter's legs in the back of the wagon.

At last they did nothing but kick each other, so Karsten had to come in front and Petter could sit in lonely grandeur on the wooden lunch-box.

Finally we came in sight of the water that we had to cross. It was a large lake, black and still.

"Hurrah! You must wake up now, Andrine!"

There lay the boat we were to row over in, and there was the enclosure where the horse was to be left. Oh, how good it was to stretch one's legs after sitting so long!

But now Karsten began to put on airs. He wanted to show how clever he was in a boat, so he took command, gave orders, and thrashed the air with his arms,--you never saw such behavior.

"He's a great fellow in a boat," said Trond.