CHAPTER XIII
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."