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.