After dinner the calves were let out. Lisbeth had finally named the three cow calves Yellow Speckle, Redsides, and Young Moolley, but as yet she had found no name to suit her for the bull calf. Lisbeth saw plainly that Kjersti wondered why she had not called any of the calves after Bliros (Gentle Cow), but she gave no sign of having noticed Kjersti's thought.
This is the way the calves were induced to leave their pen and to cross the cow-house floor. To begin with, a good-sized pail with a little milk in it was held out to each calf. In their eagerness to get the milk the calves thrust their heads clear into the pails; and when the persons holding these began to run, the calves ran too, with the pails over their heads like hats. Outside the cow-house door the pails were snatched off and there stood the calves, who had never before been beyond their pen, in the very midst of the great, wonderful new world.
The startled creatures gave an amazed look and then began to back, just as if they felt themselves suddenly standing at the head of a steep stairway; but soon they ventured to put one foot carefully forward, then another, and another. It was slow work, one step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like the wildest of forest animals.
Then began a great race in the big field,—from fence to fence, this way and that, crosswise, and round and round. Every time the calves jumped over a hillock Kjersti and Lisbeth saw their tails stand straight up against the sky like tillers. Lisbeth thought she had never seen anything so funny. But they could not keep together long. They soon ran off in various directions, and in the evening Lisbeth had to go to the farthest corners of the field with a pail and coax them home one by one; for of course they did not have sense enough to know when to go home,—they who were out in the world for the first time!
Lisbeth was lying again in her little room. It was the evening of her first working day. She had said her simple evening prayer, as usual, and then stretched herself out on the bed, feeling how good it was to rest, for her body was tired through and through.
What a day it had been! A long day, too, she knew; nevertheless, she could not imagine where it had gone. She felt that she must think over all that had happened. But drowsiness came stealing upon her and threw the scenes of the day into confusion. She saw a pair of big horns that plowed like a snow plow through a swarming crowd, and then she saw Brindle standing in her stall with her head on one side and a big bandage over one of her horns, looking exactly like an old peasant woman with a kerchief tied around her head for a headache; and then she thought she saw, written in the air, a couplet that she had once heard:
Rearing its tail against the sky,
Danced the calf on the hilltop high.