"Come, make haste!" said grandpapa, up on the hill; and Marit rose, and walked with reluctant feet upwards.
"You are not forgetting your garter?" Oeyvind cried after her. She turned around, and looked first at the garter and then at him. At last she came to a great resolution, and said, in a choked voice:
He went over to her, and, taking her hand, said:
"Thank you!"
"Oh, nothing to thank for!" she answered, but drew a long sigh, and walked on.
He sat down on the grass again. The goat walked about near him, but he was no longer so pleased with it as before.
The goat was fastened to the wall; but Oeyvind walked about, looking up at the cliff. His mother came out and sat down by his side; he wanted to hear stories about what was far away, for now the goat no longer satisfied him. So she told him how once everything could talk: the mountain talked to the stream, and the stream to the river, the river to the sea, and the sea to the sky; but then he asked if the sky did not talk to any one; and the sky talked to the clouds, the clouds to the trees, the trees to the grass, the grass to the flies, the flies to the animals, the animals to the children, the children to the grown-up people; and so it went on, until it had gone round, and no one could tell where it had begun.
Oeyvind looked at the mountain, the trees, the sky, and had never really seen them before. The cat came out at that moment, and lay down on the stone before the door in the sunshine.