QUARRELS AND RECONCILIATION
All the children were at last in bed and asleep. But it was terribly
provoking for six of them to wake up in the late afternoon on Sunday
and find the house empty of people. Still worse was it to find the
cow-house empty too, all the cows they had determined to milk already
out. The cows which they had ‘divided’ among them all to milk, the one
most easily milked, Dancing Rose, to Viva, were grazing miles off in
the woods. The goats too.
Pelle had not done as he had promised when he had come home late at
night long after the others, after having been out hunting for Golden
Star.
He had promised to take all the children with him to the woods as
goatherds. They were going to row over the river to the mill settlement
where there was a big black bull from foreign lands: a bull that had a
brass ring in his nose and a chain around his forehead, and that was so
furious when he saw children that he roared so that smoke came from his
nostrils, and he had to be kept in a special enclosure during the day.
And Pelle had promised that they might fish for trout in a little
mountain stream. And he was going to teach Andy to blow in another sort
of horn that was easier than the one he had made. They were going to
see a hole where robbers had lived once upon a time. You could creep
in, big as you were, through a hole that you could scarcely see in the
mountain and then stand there, as many as fifteen men strong.
Pelle was going to show them a place in the woods where there was a
white ring right in the green moss, left by fairies who used to dance
there. And he had promised to take them to a spot in the mountains
where he had once seen a wood-nymph. She was dressed in green with long
hair, yellow as corn silk, and she had looked at him and beckoned to
him so that he was just about to follow her when he suddenly thought
she must be a wood-nymph, and said the name of Jesus. Then she had
slunk away and become like a kneading-trough.
And all the berries they were going to pick, and cat-gold and white
marble pebbles that Pelle had promised them and that could be found
only in one place! Such grumbling and discontent! Such sour faces as
appeared up at the dairy farm that day, it would not be easy to find on
such a radiantly beautiful sunshiny afternoon.
‘There the sun stares in at the window and pretends to be so happy and
noble,’ sniffed Ingegard, and pulled at her hair as she braided it.
‘He looks as if he thought we ought to be glad just because we have
him,’ muttered Gertrude, and tied a hard, provoking knot in her
petticoat tape with angry, violent movements.
‘And not a spark of fire,’ mumbled Elsa. She was dressed and stood
practically in the huge fireplace with an armful of sticks that she
laid on the coals that really gleamed quite defensibly.
A blaze flamed up at once, and now Elsa said that she was being burned
up, though just a minute ago ‘not a spark’ was to be found.
It was Sunday and surely they ought to be given coffee with the rusks
they had brought from home, that day at least.
‘Don’t try to put off any skim milk on us, I tell you,’ said Angela in
a monotonous complaining tone to Elsa, who, with an empty wooden bowl,
went toward the milk-room. Angela’s long silky hair had tangled because
she had forgotten to twist it up in curl-papers the night before. She
was so irritable and impatient that Viva insisted that she fizzed when,
wetting her finger, she touched her, as you do when you feel to see if
a flatiron is hot enough.
‘You’re stupid! And mean too,’ said Angela to Viva, who, barelegged,
pinned up her underskirt like trousers and said that she was the master
of the house and had the right to be whatever she wanted to be.
Sylvia sat upright in the lower bed and wept. Everything was ‘horrid’
and she longed for her mother. ‘Boo-hoo-hoo!’ she sniffed. ‘What did I
come here for? It was much nicer and better at home.’
Which remark was true enough if with the room where she was now she
compared her parents’ city apartment of ten luxurious rooms containing
pictures, rugs, crystal, and silver, besides great soft beds, the
finest linens, and silk covers.
Yellow-green moss grew in the cracks in the plank walls. Benches and
stools were actually shiny with wear, and were coarse and unpainted.
The floor was unplaned, with wide cracks, the door clumsy with a big
iron hook instead of a lock. The bed, where she had just awakened so
out of sorts, was filled with crackling straw, covered with a coarse
linen sheet. Instead of a ‘silk comfort’ she had a sheepskin robe to
pull up about her, though she was so warm she wanted to throw it to the
ends of the world.
‘Well, who asked you to come along?’ said Viva impudently. ‘You could
have stayed at home without us--cry-baby! Just the same, you had half
of the stick of licorice that we had with us for a party, and the
biggest piece of sugar-candy, when Elsa divided it, and a whole cup of
oat kernels when we got only a half because Angela made us believe that
it is nice to let company eat up everything that’s good and that you
want yourself.’
‘Oh, goodness! I believe you’re bewitched, Viva,’ wailed Sylvia, who
with her elbows on her drawn-up knees still sat in bed, with her
white-blond hair strained out between her fingers as her head rested on
her hands, a picture of deepest misery.
‘Gracious! Licorice! You count a poor little piece of licorice! Why,
I could have a whole house made of licorice, with sugar-candy windows
and a butter-scotch roof, and with walls made of only oat kernels. Papa
has an awful lot of money, Lina says, and I’ll ask him to build me a
house like that, and you won’t even get a chance to lick the licorice
threshold.’
‘You’re quite right, my little pig,’ smirked Viva, and kissed her
fingers to Sylvia.
She had put a little brown birch twig between her lips and pretended
to smoke as she walked back and forth with her hands in her ‘pockets.’
A fine tailor from town had lived with them a while and sewed her
father’s and the men’s homespun clothes, and Viva had treasured his
every move and word.
She sat down on a three-legged stool beside the bed and sang a verse of
a ballad, slowly, with half-closed eyes:
‘On a flower-clad knoll sat Hjalmar and sang
About summer’s beauty and light,
And the roses’ bright heads and the leaves of the flowers
Bowed deeply and gravely their thanks.’
‘Be quiet, Viva,’ whispered Ingegard, ‘you’ll wake up the poor little
things in the milk-room.’
‘Well, you see, my little sweet, that’s what I want to do,’ babbled
Viva, whirling around.
‘You see, I don’t want them to be like us. There is nothing meaner,
more awful than to wake up in the morning, when it is evening.’
‘He saw only her,’
continued Viva.
‘Saw the rose that burned purple on a snow-white skin,’
she bawled now right at the milk-room door. She stopped abruptly,
astonished and completely taken aback.
The door opened at the same moment, and Andy and Maglena showed
themselves in the doorway. Fully dressed, combed, washed until they
shone, happy and beaming, they seemed to radiate sunshine.
Maglena’s hands were full of wild lilies-of-the-valley, twin-flowers,
and star-flowers. Andy had made boxes out of birch-bark, six of them.
He carried them carefully on one arm.
They were filled to the top with early ripe cloud-berries.
‘Are you _up_?’ asked Viva sharply, though she saw them fully dressed
before her. ‘I thought you were sleeping. Why in the world did you get
up?’ she continued in an envious, deeply disapproving tone.
‘Because Pelle woke us before he went off with the cattle this morning.’
‘O-oh, and the mean thing wouldn’t wake us!’ said Gertrude, almost with
tears in her voice.
‘He did what he could,’ said Andy. ‘He called and screamed here at
the door, and blew the horn right outside the wall where the bed is.
Sara yodeled and Karl blew his horn. The cows made a lot of noise too
when they were let out, so we thought that would wake you up.’ Andy set
forth the marsh berries on the little table beside the window while he
made his explanation.
‘Ugh, that isn’t enough to wake us, he knows that well enough,’ sniffed
Ingegard. ‘That just puts you to sleep.’
‘Have you been out having fun all day?’ asked Elsa almost reproachfully.
‘Well, I don’t know that we’ve had fun. We’ve helped in the cow-house;
we milked all the goats,’ enlightened Andy doubtfully.
‘Well, that was fun,’ decided Gertrude.
‘And then we groomed the cows, before they were let out,’ said Maglena,
pleased.
‘That’s just what we used to do too,’ Gertrude joined in. ‘And they’re
so happy and soft and grateful. Oh, oh, _oh_! And we’ve just slept. And
it’s almost the last day at the farm. Just as if we couldn’t sleep as
much as we need to at home, when we go to school.’
‘Ugh, yes, so awful, and it’s too late to change it,’ sighed Ingegard.
‘And then I suppose you were in the woods and on the marsh?’ asked
Angela, who was still busy trying to make her locks lie properly.
‘Yes, but in church, too,’ answered Maglena earnestly, though a little
embarrassed and doubtful.
‘In church?’ screamed the children all at once. ‘In church!--but that
is twelve miles from here!’
‘Be quiet, Maglena,’ warned Andy and looked mightily troubled.
Maglena put her hands under her apron and crept down on the threshold
of the open door, obviously determined to obey her brother’s command.
‘In which church? Tell us, do you hear?’ asked Elsa, going to the
doorway to Maglena with a piece of bread and butter in her hand.
‘It wasn’t anything. I was just talking.’
‘Listen, Maglena, were you in a pretend-church?’ said Ingegard, who,
with her bread and butter, sat down beside Maglena.
‘I don’t know what kind of a church,’ evaded Maglena.
‘Please, dear sweet Maglena, tell me, _just_ me, what church were you
in,’ whispered Sylvia.
In her long nightgown she sprang out of bed and ran across the floor,
throwing herself into Maglena’s lap with her arms around her neck.
‘Please, _sweet_ Lena, tell me, just me!’
Maglena looked anxiously over at Andy, who sat very properly at the
table and ate marsh berries and milk with Angela, Viva, and the twins,
Ingegard and Gertrude.
‘Tell if you want to,’ consented Andy, who saw his sister’s troubled
look.
‘To me, just to me,’ whispered Sylvia.
‘How did the church look?’
‘Green inside with a blue ceiling.’
‘Was it the woods? Was God the minister?’ whispered Sylvia, suddenly
very serious. ‘God came to us and took back my little sister Eva that
I used to have. She has so much fun now that she doesn’t want to come
back to me. When I get lonesome I think sometimes that I’ll go up to
her to God. Tell me, was God the minister?’
‘No-o, he was only Andy.’
Viva had come up quietly. She heard the minister’s name.
‘Do you know,’ she cried, ‘now when we are ready and have eaten and
everything, we’ll go to church! Andy will be the minister, ’cause he
has preached before to-day, to Maglena.’
Andy reddened up over his ears.
‘Yes, Andy, if you’re used to being minister, you’ll have to preach
to us,’ said Elsa gently and seriously. ‘We have just slept and been
horrid and quarreled with each other because we were mad at ourselves
and you can’t quarrel with yourself. We’ve kept on like that all
Sunday, ever since we woke up.’
‘Yes, we _must_ get a little Sunday into us, and be good again, so
of course you’ll have to preach, Andy,’ said Ingegard, and looked
pleadingly at Andy with kind, radiant eyes.
‘Remember, Andy, that we’ve been mean to each other for nothing.
Remember that you have to make us good on Sunday,’ said Gertrude
eagerly. She folded up her skirt about her as the peasant women do when
they ride to church, and put the red striped sunbonnet on, ready to be
off.
‘And we’ll sing together, Andy,’ said Angela. ‘Go first now, and we’ll
come after.’
Angela’s voice was so steady and convincing that Andy, without further
ado, rose and led the way.