V.
"HE HAD IN HIS MIND A SONG."
Arne was now in his twentieth year. Yet he continued tending the cattle upon the mountains in the summer, while in the winter he remained at home studying.
About this time the clergyman sent a message, asking him to become the parish schoolmaster, and saying his gifts and knowledge might thus be made useful to his neighbors. Arne sent no answer; but the next day, while he was driving his flock, he made the following verses:
"O, my pet lamb, lift your head,
Though a stony path you tread,
Over all the lonely fells,
Only follow still your bells.
O, my pet lamb, walk with care;
Lest you spoil your wool, beware:
Mother now must soon be sewing
New lamb-skins, for summer's going.
O, my pet lamb, try to grow
Fat and fine where'er you go:
Know you not, my little sweeting,
A spring-lamb is dainty eating?"
One day he happened to overhear a conversation between his mother and the late owner of the place: they were at odds about the horse of which they were joint-owners. "I must wait and hear what Arne says," interposed the mother. "That sluggard!" the man exclaimed; "he would like the horse to ramble about in the wood, just as he does himself." Then the mother became silent, though before she had been pleading her cause well.
Arne flushed crimson. That his mother had to bear people's jeers on his account, never before occurred to him, and, "Perhaps she had borne many," he thought. "But why had she not told him of it?" he thought again.
He turned the matter over, and then it came into his mind that the mother scarcely ever talked to him at all. But, then, he scarcely ever talked to her either. But, after all, whom did he talk much to?