“How can you know that, father,” asked Thoralf, the elder of the two boys, “when you have never been anywhere else?”
“I know it in my heart,” said Sigurd, devoutly.
“It is, after all, a matter of taste,” observed the son. “I think if I were hard pressed, I might be induced to put up with some other country.”
“You ought to blush with shame,” his father rejoined warmly. “You do not deserve the name of an Icelander, when you fail to see how you have been blessed in having been born in so beautiful a country.”
“I wish it were less beautiful and had more things to eat in it,” muttered Thoralf. “Salted codfish, I have no doubt, is good for the soul, but it rests very heavily on the stomach, especially when you eat it three times a day.”
“You ought to thank God that you have codfish, and are not a naked savage on some South Sea isle, who feeds, like an animal, on the herbs of the earth.”
“But I like codfish much better than smoked puffin,” remarked Jens, the younger brother, who was carving a pipe-bowl. “Smoked puffin always makes me sea-sick. It tastes like cod-liver oil.”
Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on the head, entered the cottage.
“You shouldn’t talk so to father, Thoralf,” said Jens, with superior dignity; for his father’s caress made him proud and happy. “Father works so hard, and he does not like to see anyone discontented.”
“That is just it,” replied the elder brother; “he works so hard, and yet barely manages to keep the wolf from the door. That is what makes me impatient with the country. If he worked so hard in any other country he would live in abundance, and in America he would become a rich man.”