OLEANA'S CLOCK
At Goodfields, the houses for the farm laborers are up in the forest.
Towards Goodfields itself, the forest is thick and dark, but up where it
has been cleared, willows and alders grow in clumps, and there are tiny
little fields and still smaller potato patches, belonging to each
sun-scorched hut with its turf roof and windows of greenish glass. From
the clearing you can look upward to the mountains, or downward, over the
thick pines and through the leafy trees, to the smooth, shining fjord.
All the huts for the farm-hands were full to running over with children.
In Henrik-hut there were nine, in Steen-hut eight, and in North-hut
eleven; and they were all tow-headed and bare-footed and all had mouths
stained with blueberries.
Henrik-hut was the place we summer-boarder-children liked best because
there was a dear old grandmother there with such soft, kind eyes. She
could not go out any more, but sat always in an armchair beside the
window; on the window-sill lay her much-worn brown prayer-book.
Oleana was Grandmother Henrik-hut's daughter. She was big, very much
freckled, always good-natured, and talked a steady stream, often about
her husband. She didn't seem highly delighted with him.
"Poor Kaspar!" said Oleana. "He hasn't brains enough for anything. No, I
can truly say he hasn't much sense under his hat. Things would be pretty
bad at Henrik-hut if there were no Oleana here." And Kaspar agreed with
her perfectly.
"I haven't much sense, or learning either," said Kaspar. "But that's the
way it goes in the world,--one clever one and one stupid one come
together; and so Oleana manages everything, you see."
Even with Oleana to manage, however, things had often been bad enough at
Henrik-hut. They had almost starved at times, Grandmother, Kaspar,
Oleana and all the nine children.
"It isn't worth speaking of now," said Oleana, "the hard scratching we
have had many a time. But when the summer boarders,--fine city
folk,--came to Goodfields, luck came to Henrik-hut."
Oleana did the washing for these summer guests and earned money that
way, you see.
"It's just as if all this money were given to me!" said Oleana. "For our
Lord fills the brooks with water and the work I put on the clothes is
nothing to count."
There were beds everywhere in the one room of the hut, and what with
shelves and clothes, wooden bowls and buckets and even shiny
scrap-pictures on the walls, there wasn't a vacant spot anywhere. The
floor was shiningly clean, however, and strewn with juniper boughs, and
the sun shone cheerily through the greenish window-panes, on
Grandmother and the nine tow-headed children, and all.
Oleana had been married twenty-one years and in all that time had never
owned a clock. Through the long darkness of the winter afternoons and
evenings, when the snow lay thick and heavy on the pine-trees round
about, and the roads were blocked in every direction with high drifts,
there they would be in the hut;--Oleana and Grandmother and the nine
tow-heads and the husband without much sense under his hat,--and not
even the clever Oleana would have the remotest idea what o'clock it was.
In summer she looked at the sun to tell the time, and on clear winter
nights at the stars; though to see these, she had to get up in the cold
and breathe on the thickly frosted window-pane to make a space to peep
through.
One day while I was at Henrik-hut talking with Oleana, it occurred to me
that we summer-boarder-children might put our money together and buy a
clock for Oleana. The grown-up people wanted to help, and so we got a
lot of money; and a big clock with a white dial and red roses was bought
in the city.
Then it was such fun surprising Oleana with it! We had an awfully jolly
time. A message was sent to her asking her to come to Goodfields; and
down she came with her hair wet and smooth, and a clean stiff
working-dress on, but having no notion what we wanted of her.
The clock had been hung up in the hall at Goodfields and its shining
brass pendulum was swinging with a slow and sure tick-tock. All the
ladies stood around and I was to present the clock.
"Oleana," said I, "we wanted to give you a clock;--and that's it."
Oleana looked as if the sky had fallen.
"Oh no, no, no!" she cried. "It isn't possible--of course not! Why
should I have that clock?"
"Because you have so many children," said I.
Just then the clock struck six clear strokes, and Oleana began to cry.
"I never knew there were such kind people in the world," said Oleana, as
she stood with folded hands, looking up at the clock through her tears.
"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."
[Illustration: "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!