"The horse and the man
Have to bear all they can.
But the cow and the wife
Fare the hardest in life,"
said old Kari. And therefore she always raked away the best hay from the horses and stuffed the cows with it.
It was out on the hill that Kari told about the Goodfields brownie in the old days. Old Kari's mother had often driven in a sledge over Goodfields hill while the brownie stood behind on the runner chuckling and laughing. But the queer thing was that when they stopped at the top of the hill or down in the valley, they didn't see him, but no sooner had they started off than there was the brownie on the runner again.
It is really horrid that there are no brownies in the world any more!
Goodfields lay high up among the mountains. There were great green hills and meadows stretching down towards the fjord, and dark spruce forests above on the mountain, and far below, the still, shining fjord. And behind each other as far as we could see there were just mountains, exquisite blue mountains, rising into the bright sunny air.
The buildings were very big; there was nothing small at Goodfields, two big main houses with big drawing-rooms and big canopied beds and big down puffs, and big goats' milk cheeses like mountains, and big milk-pans.
That's the way it was at Goodfields, beauty and plenty everywhere. And it all belonged to Mother Goodfields. And she was the nicest person in the world, for she was so kind. She wasn't the least bit cross when we tagged after her in the dairy and the grain-house, and we might eat all the green gooseberries in the garden, if we wanted to. And everybody who was poor and sick went to Mother Goodfields, as all the people in the neighborhood called her. She was big and strong and earnest and helped them all. She was a widow and had no children, and it seemed to her so lonely on the big farm that she took summer boarders.
On the fjord the little steamboat went up one day and down the next, with foreigners who sat stretching their legs out on the deck and stared sleepily at the mountains.
I am not fond of mountains, to tell the truth. Ugh! when you stay among them it seems so cramped and horrid. You feel just like a little ant at last. No, give me the sea, with its seaweed tossing on the waves, and its rocking boats and vessels, and the reefs and the fresh wind.
There were many times at Goodfields when it was so downright hot in the valley that I felt like crying when I thought of the sea. My brother Karsten felt exactly the same.