A Happy Boy Part 18

"Ah, so it was with me for a long time. I lived at variance with a good friend, and wanted _him_ to come to _me_, and all the while I was unhappy. At last I took it into my head to go to _him_, and since then all has been well with me."

Ole looks up and says nothing.

The school-master: "How do you think the gard is doing, Ole?"

"Failing, like myself."

"Who shall have it when you are gone?"

"That is what I do not know, and it is that, too, which troubles me."

"Your neighbors are doing well now, Ole."

"Yes, they have that agriculturist to help them."

The school-master turned unconcernedly toward the window: "You should have help,--you, too, Ole. You cannot walk much, and you know very little of the new ways of management."

Ole: "I do not suppose there is any one who would help me."

"Have you asked for it?"

Ole is silent.

The school-master: "I myself dealt just so with the Lord for a long time. 'You are not kind to me,' I said to Him. 'Have you prayed me to be so?' asked He. No; I had not done so. Then I prayed, and since then all has been truly well with me."

Ole is silent; but now the school-master, too, is silent.

Finally Ole says:--

"I have a grandchild; she knows what would please me before I am taken away, but she does not do it."

The school-master smiles.

"Possibly it would not please her?"

Ole makes no reply.

The school-master: "There are many things which trouble you; but as far as I can understand they all concern the gard."

Ole says, quietly,--

"It has been handed down for many generations, and the soil is good.

All that father after father has toiled for lies in it; but now it does not thrive. Nor do I know who shall drive in when I am driven out. It will not be one of the family."

"Your granddaughter will preserve the family."

"But how can he who takes her take the gard? That is what I want to know before I die. You have no time to lose, Baard, either for me or for the gard."

They were both silent; at last the school-master says,--

"Shall we walk out and take a look at the gard in this fine weather?"

"Yes; let us do so. I have work-people on the slope; they are gathering leaves, but they do not work except when I am watching them."

He totters off after his large cap and staff, and says, meanwhile,--

"They do not seem to like to work for me; I cannot understand it."

When they were once out and turning the corner of the house, he paused.

"Just look here. No order: the wood flung about, the axe not even stuck in the block."

He stooped with difficulty, picked up the axe, and drove it in fast.

"Here you see a skin that has fallen down; but has any one hung it up again?"

He did it himself.

"And the store-house; do you think the ladder is carried away?"

He set it aside. He paused, and looking at the school-master, said,--

"This is the way it is every single day."

As they proceeded upward they heard a merry song from the slopes.

"Why, they are singing over their work," said the school-master.

"That is little Knut Ostistuen who is singing; he is helping his father gather leaves. Over yonder _my_ people are working; you will not find them singing."

"That is not one of the parish songs, is it?"

"No, it is not."

"Oyvind Pladsen has been much in Ostistuen; perhaps that is one of the songs he has introduced into the parish, for there is always singing where he is."

There was no reply to this.

The field they were crossing was not in good condition; it required attention. The school-master commented on this, and then Ole stopped.

"It is not in my power to do more," said he, quite pathetically.

"Hired work-people without attention cost too much. But it is hard to walk over such a field, I can a.s.sure you."

As their conversation now turned on the size of the gard, and what portion of it most needed cultivation, they decided to go up the slope that they might have a view of the whole. When they at length had reached a high elevation, and could take it all in, the old man became moved.

"Indeed, I should not like to leave it so. We have labored hard down there, both I and those who went before me, but there is nothing to show for it."

A song rang out directly over their heads, but with the peculiar shrilling of a boy's voice when it is poured out with all its might.

They were not far from the tree in whose top was perched little Knut Ostistuen, gathering leaves for his father, and they were compelled to listen to the boy:--