After that they were called into the house again and everybody drank coffee. When they had finished the coffee drinking, Kari began packing into baskets the food that was left; and when that was done, Kjersti Hoel said: "Well, now we have done everything that we can here. You may bring Crookhorn with you, Lisbeth, and come to live with me. That was the last thing I promised your mother."
Thus had it come about that Lisbeth Longfrock, holding Crookhorn by a rope, stood outside the gate at Peerout Castle with Kjersti Hoel and Bearhunter; and then it was that she looked behind her and began to cry.
On one road she saw Kari Svehaugen with a big basket on her arm and Bliros following her; and on the other she saw the back of Jacob, with whom she had just shaken hands, saying, "May you fare well." He looked singularly small and forlorn.
Last of all she saw Lars Svehaugen put a pine twig in the door latch as a sign that Peerout Castle was now closed, locked, and forsaken.
CHAPTER IV. SPRING: LETTING THE ANIMALS OUT TO PASTURE
One morning, a few weeks after the sad departure from Peerout Castle, Lisbeth Longfrock awoke early in the small sleeping room built under the great staircase at Hoel. She opened her eyes wide at the moment of waking, and tried to gather her thoughts together. She was conscious of a delightful, quivering expectancy, and felt that she had awakened to something great and new,-something that she had waited for and been exceedingly glad over; but she could not at once remember just what it was.
The little room, whose only furniture consisted of a bed, a chair, a stove, and a small wooden shelf with a mirror over it, was filled with daylight in spite of the early hour. The sun fell slanting down through a window set high up in the wall directly over Lisbeth's bed, and the windowpanes were pictured in bright yellow squares on the floor near the tiny stove. The corner of one square spread itself against the stove, and Lisbeth traced it with her eyes as she lay in bed. At the tip of the corner glimmered something light-green and shiny. Was it from there that a fine, wonderful fragrance came floating toward her? She sniffed a little. Yes, indeed! now she remembered. The fragrance came from the fresh birch twigs she had decorated the room with yesterday. Out of doors it was spring,-the sprouting, bursting springtime. To-day the cattle were to be let out and the calves named. To-day she would begin work in earnest and be a responsible individual. In short, she would be the herd girl at Hoel Farm.
It was now a month since Lisbeth had come to Hoel Farm, but up to this time she had been treated merely as company. She had walked about the place, sauntered after Kjersti here and there in the house, ground the coffee, and brought out from a bowl in the pantry the small cakes that they ate with their coffee every afternoon. Frequently, too, she had had pleasant talks with Kjersti.
As for helping with the animals,-the sheep and the goats had been let out, to be sure, but nevertheless they did not need her care because they were allowed, so early in the season, to run about everywhere except in the garden, and that Bearhunter stood guard over. In the cow house there was nothing for her to do, for a milkmaid and an under-milkmaid did the work there. Of course the girl who tended the flocks ought really to be able to help in milking the cows; but it was thought that Lisbeth had better wait a year before she tried to do that,-her hands being rather too small as yet. Lisbeth had kept measuring her hands every now and then and pulling her fingers to make them grow; and after a while she had asked the milkmaid if she did not think they had grown large enough, but the milkmaid did not see that they were any larger. She could not have very good eyes!
Lisbeth had, of course, expected to take care of Crookhorn,-Kjersti and she both thought she ought to do that; but it had proved to be impossible. Crookhorn had become so freakish that sometimes they almost thought her out of her wits. In the building shared by the sheep and goats she ranged back and forth from wall to wall, knocking against the sheep and the other goats so hard as she went that their ribs rattled. At last she had to be tied to one of the walls, and with the shortest rope possible at that. Nor would she allow herself to be milked peaceably in that building. The first time Lisbeth tried it, Crookhorn, with a toss of the head, gave a kick that sent Lisbeth and the pail rolling off in different directions. Afterward the milkmaid herself took Crookhorn in hand at milking time; but even for her it was always a feat of strength, and she had to have some one to help her by holding the goat's horns.
When Crookhorn was let out with the other goats, would she ramble with them over the fields and meadows, seeking food? No, indeed! She would station herself poutingly by the cow-house door and stand there the livelong day,-"bellowing like a cow" the farm boy said; and then in the evening, when the other goats came home plump and well fed, there Crookhorn would stand as thin and hungry as a wolf.
Lisbeth thought that Crookhorn, if provided with a stall in the cow house, would act like a reasonable creature again. But neither Kjersti nor the milkmaid would consent to the removal; they thought a goat ought not to be humored in such unreasonable fancies.
Thus it was that Lisbeth had not had much to do during her first month at Hoel Farm. The only thing that Kjersti had required of her was to keep her own little room under the hall staircase in nice order, and that she had done. Every day she had made the bed herself, and every Saturday she had washed the floor and the shelf, and spread juniper twigs about. Last Saturday Kjersti had come out to take a look at it, and had said to her that she kept her room in better order than the grown-up girls in the south chamber kept theirs; and Lisbeth knew that this was true, for she had noticed it herself.
[Illustration: LISBETH'S ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS]
But now everything was going to be different. Kjersti Hoel had come to Lisbeth's room the night before and said that the cows were to be let out early in the morning, and that Lisbeth, like all the rest of the Hoel Farm people, must be up early to help. Later in the day the calves that had been born in the cow house during the winter were to be let out for the first time, and Lisbeth would have to look after them for that afternoon at any rate. Kjersti had said also that Lisbeth was to be allowed to give the calves their names,-names that they would keep all their lives, even after they had grown to be full-sized cows.
The next day after the letting out of the animals Lisbeth was to take a lunch bag and begin her spring work of going into the forest all day to watch the sheep and goats. It would not do to have them running about the fields at home any longer, Kjersti said.
Suddenly Lisbeth recollected what it was that she had pondered over so long as she lay awake the evening before,-it was the names of the calves. In spite of all her pondering she had got no farther than to wonder whether the cow with the red sides and white head and the gentle but bright-looking face should not be called Bliros. That idea, however, she had given up; it seemed to her that only one cow in the world could be called Bliros. Then she had determined to think no longer about Bliros or the names of the calves, and so had fallen asleep.
What if she had overslept herself now! She hoped not, with all her heart, for she had heard Kjersti Hoel say that she did not like girls to lie abed late and dally in the morning. How mortifying it would be for her not to be on the spot as early as the others to-day, her very first working day!
Wide-awake now, Lisbeth hopped quickly out of bed and popped into her long frock. Then, having made her bed[6] with all haste, she opened the door, went out through the hall way, and stood on the outside steps.
[6] Lisbeth meant to be very neat and tidy, but she should have