“Baling lutfisk!” said Arne despairingly. He had done that before, plenty of times, especially when father had a shipment he wanted to get off in a hurry. “That’s such a tiresome job, and so smelly! Do I have to stay home for that stuff?”
“You like lutfisk as well as anyone when it comes to the table,” Besta reminded him. “Don’t you know how good it is, with melted butter or nice milk gravy?”
Arne knew that well enough, but he certainly did not relish the idea of staying home from the first saeter trip of the summer to bale lutfisk. Part of the work connected with lutfisk was all right. It was fun to help unload the big cod from the fishing boats, to watch the men expertly split and clean the fish and spread them to dry. Ole Berg, the old fisherman who was father’s right-hand man, had showed Arne how it was done, and even let him help.
Father thought Arne was a little young to handle the big, sharp knives, but Ole said the boy was very quick with his hands. So Herr Dalen gave his son a good Norwegian hunting knife with a silver handle shaped like a horse’s head and a neat leather sheath which fitted on his belt. Arne was very proud of it and put it to good use under Ole’s directions. But baling those bundles of dried fish was a very different matter. And certainly tomorrow was no day to spend on the packing-house dock at a tedious job like that. Then a hopeful thought struck him, and he asked, “Well, then, is Gustav going to help bale lutfisk too?”
His big brother Gustav was at home just now between voyages to sea—Gustav, who was going to be a ship’s captain some day. He would sail as first mate the very next time the steamer Laks came to port here in Nordheim on its way up the fjord.
“What’s that about Gustav?” called out a big voice; and a tall, dark-eyed young man with curly black hair came into the kitchen. “Oh, good for you, Besta! You’re making kringler! Are those for the trip to the saeter?”
“Are you going to the saeter too, Gustav?” cried Arne accusingly. “And I have to stay home and bale smelly old lutfisk!”
Disappointment swept over him. It was worse than ever if Gustav was going and he couldn’t. There was a lump in his throat, and it seemed to him he could hardly breathe. All spring he had been looking forward to this trip. He longed to be in the gay procession that would wind its way from the little village up the mountain road. Up it would go until the road became only a path, then still up and up. At last they would come to the little log house right on the cliff overlooking the fjord, with the pastures and valleys behind and mountains, gray with granite and green with pines, rising above it all.