He has kissed my lips all red and glowing as fire.
There! Now we must get the water to boil. (Picks up the tufts of bearberry and goes to Tota.) See what Arnes brought you!
Tota. They are berries.
Halla. Yes, but you must not eat them or you will get a pain in your little stomach. (Rises and finds a long, stiff straw.) Now I'll show you what you can do. (Threading the berries on the straw, she counts.) One, two—four—six, seven—so many years your father and mother have been in the hills. (Strokes Tota's hair.) When you are sixteen, we shall have lived here for twenty years, and then we shall be free again. On that day, Tota shall wear snow-white clothes and shoes of colored leather, and mother will clasp her silver girdle around your waist. And when we come down to the lowlands, the first one we meet is a young man with silver buttons in his coat. He stops and turns his horse and stands looking after you ever so long. Then your mother has grown old and wrinkled, and her hair is almost as white as snow. Your father, too, has grown old. But you are straight as a silver-weed, and when you run, you lift your feet high!
Enter Kari and Arnes.
Kari (laughing). Ah, now it's steaming. I nearly fell headlong into the cave, when we lifted the cover from the entrance.
Halla. Did you? (Gives the straw to Tota.) Now you can go on by yourself. (Rises.) Is there any need of closing the cave every time? When it's not raining, it might be left open.
Kari. No harm in being careful. If they should come upon us suddenly, we surely should not have time to close the entrance, and they would find the cave and destroy all our stores, as they did five years ago. Do you remember when we came back to the old place and found nothing but ashes?—and winter setting in. Not a single piece of mutton did they leave us.
Halla. I don't easily forget.
Kari. Whenever I think of it, I feel like doing something wicked. After all, we are human too.