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!
CHAPTER XIV
A TRIP TO GOODFIELDS SAETER
Mother Goodfields had made us a regular promise,—and shaken hands on it,—that we should go to the saeter some time during the summer. Goodfields saeter lay about fourteen miles west in the mountains. Every day I reminded Mother Goodfields of her promise so that she should not forget it, you see. For it often seems to me that grown-up people forget very easily.
We had decided beforehand that it was to be Petter Kloed, Karsten, Andrine, and I who should go.
None of the grown-ups would join us. Mrs. Proet said she should have to be well paid to go, and really, such fine, fashionable ladies as she aren't fit for a saeter anyway. Miss Mangelsen was afraid there would be fleas, and Miss Melby was afraid that she being so stout, the boat we had to cross the mountain lake in would not be strong enough to bear her. Miss Jordan had been at a hundred saeters, she said, and the only difference among them was that one was a little dirtier than another; and that degree of difference she wouldn't bother herself to see, she said. Mrs. Kloed is so nervous she never dares do anything. So at last there were none to go but Petter, Karsten, Andrine, and myself, as I have said.
Karsten had taken it into his head that at saeters there were always bears, and that cream at saeters was always exactly an inch thick; and bears and inch-thick cream were what he wanted to see. Petter Kloed wished to get hold of certain mountain flowers that he could classify. Such botany I will have nothing to do with. I smell the flowers and think they are charming, but I don't care a button which class they belong to, not I! As for going to the saeter, Andrine and I wanted to go just for the fun of going.
Well, one day in August, Olsen, the farm-boy, and Trond Oppistuen were going to the saeter to cut hay. If we wished, we were welcome to go along with them.