“Will you come back to the village, now?” asked Olaf.
“Not yet,” said the Brownie. “You and I must travel the world together. Then I’ll go back. Your father should have known better than to pay a Brownie. He should have known that we work for love. Here I have been all this time wearing out brooms on these rocks and polishing a stone, waiting for the village child to find me. And you’ve come!” said the Brownie, as he danced into the cave. He soon returned carrying a little wooden cage with a big cockroach inside. He opened the cage and took the cockroach on his finger.
“You’ve found me,” he kept saying, “you’ve found me! Now there’s nothing left but the travels. Fly, cockroach,” he cried, “fly fast and straight, and tell my brothers that Olaf has come. Tell them to launch the boat. Tell them we are coming—Olaf and I.”
He let the cockroach fly from his hand and it boomed away in the still air of the summer night. Olaf heard a kr-r-r-r-r-r in the pine woods. It might, he thought, be the Brownies launching the little boat.
And that is how Olaf found the Brownie and came to make his travels with him. They sailed away—away to Glittering Harbor where great ships lay close together in the golden sunset; they won the marvelous horse and they found the white flower that can be bought only for love—like the Brownies’ services.
By and by their travels were over and Aiken-Drum returned with Olaf to the village of Blednock. And that is why the kitchen floors of these village people are so wonderfully scrubbed and why the pans shine brighter than those in any other kitchens of the country side. And Aiken-Drum has a merry life as he scrubs the pans and washes the dishes, and he is very, very happy to know that he will never be paid for it.
THE POOR LITTLE TURKEY GIRL
All alone in a very old cottage near the border of a village lived a little girl who herded turkeys for a living. She was very, very poor. Her clothes were patched and tattered. Little was ever given to her except the food she lived on from day to day, and now and then a piece of old worn-out clothing.
But the child had a winning face and bright eyes. She had also a very loving disposition. She was always kind to the turkeys which she drove to and from the plains every day, giving to them the affection she longed for but which she herself never received from anyone. The turkeys loved their little mistress in return. They would come immediately at her call and they would go willingly anywhere she wished to send them.