My fine Sunday cap has been carried away
By a furious gale;
And I'll wear it no more to the chapel to pray
In the wind and the hail.
He chanted this ballad over and over again until he was tired, then sat still, smiling and stroking the fox skin. He had learned the song when he was a child from his mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing the sheep. And he could not think of any other for the moment. It wasn't, in fact, a bad song. There were many good rhymesters in Iceland. He began singing again, rocking his body back and forth vehemently, and stroking the fox skin the while. And Samur, who sat in front of him, cocked his head first on one side, then on the other, and gave him a knowing look. At last the dog stretched out his neck, raised his muzzle into the air and howled, using every variation of key known to him. At this Arni stopped short and stared at him, then bending his head slightly to one side to study him, he roared with laughter.
What an extraordinary dog! Yes, really extraordinary.
In the little kitchen at Bali, Groa, the mistress, crouched before the stove and poked the fire with such vigour that both ashes and embers flew out on the floor. She was preparing to heat a mouthful of porridge for supper for her old man and the brats. She stood up, rubbed her eyes and swore. The horrid smoke that always came from that rattletrap of a stove! And that wretched old fool of a husband was not man enough to fix it! Oh, no, he wasn't handy enough for that; he went at every blessed thing as if his fingers were all thumbs. And where could he be loafing tonight? Not home yet! Serve him right if she locked the house and allowed him to stay in the sheepcotes, or wherever it was he was dawdling. There now, those infernal brats were at the spinning wheel. Groa jumped up, darted into the passage, and went to the stairs.
Will you leave that spinning wheel be, you young devils? If you break the flier or the upright, your little old mother will be after you.
A dead calm ensued. So Groa returned to the kitchen, and taking a loaf of pot-bread from the cupboard, cut a few slices and spread them with dripping.
Now a scratching sound was heard at the door, and Arni entered.
Good evening to all, said he with urbanity, as he set down the gun behind the kitchen door. Here's that gun. It has certainly paid for itself, poor old thing.
His wife did not reply to his greeting, but she eyed him askance with a look that was anything but loving.
Been fooling around with that gun! Why the blazes couldn't you have come home and brought me a bit of peat from the pit? A fine hunter you are! I might as well have married the devil.—And his wife turned from him with a sneer.