Part 50

"Are you mad?" said his mother. "What has become of the goat?"

"Oh-h-h, I happened to--to--to sell it for a cake!"

As soon as he had uttered the word, he understood what it was to sell the goat for a cake; he had not thought of it before. His mother said:

"What do you suppose the little goat thinks of you, when you could sell him for a cake?"

And the boy thought about it, and felt sure that he could never again be happy in this world, and not even in heaven, he thought, afterwards. He felt so sorry, that he promised himself never again to do anything wrong, never to cut the thread on the spinning wheel, nor let the goats out, nor go down to the sea alone. He fell asleep where he lay, and dreamed about the goat, that he had gone to heaven; our Lord sat there with a great beard, as in the catechism, and the goat stood eating the leaves off a shining tree; but Oeyvind sat alone on the roof, and could not come up.

Suddenly there came something wet close up to his ear, and he started up. "Bay-ay-ay!" it said; and it was the goat, who had come back again.

"What! have you got back?"

He got up, took it by the two forelegs, and danced with it as if it were a brother; he pulled its beard, and he was just going in to his mother with it, when he heard someone behind him, and, looking, saw the girl sitting on the greensward by his side. Now he understood it all, and let go the goat.

"Is it you who have come with it?"

She sat tearing the grass up with her hands, and said:

"They would not let me keep it; grandfather is sitting up there, waiting."

While the boy stood looking at her, he heard a sharp voice from the road above call out, "Now!"

Then she remembered what she was to do; she rose, went over to Oeyvind, put one of her muddy hands into his, and, turning her face away, said:

"I beg your pardon!"

But then her courage was all gone; she threw herself over the goat, and wept.

"I think you had better keep the goat," said Oeyvind, looking the other way.

"Come, make haste!" said grandpapa, up on the hill; and Marit rose, and walked with reluctant feet upwards.

"You are not forgetting your garter?" Oeyvind cried after her. She turned around, and looked first at the garter and then at him. At last she came to a great resolution, and said, in a choked voice:

"You may keep that."

He went over to her, and, taking her hand, said:

"Thank you!"

"Oh, nothing to thank for!" she answered, but drew a long sigh, and walked on.

He sat down on the grass again. The goat walked about near him, but he was no longer so pleased with it as before.

* * * * *

The goat was fastened to the wall; but Oeyvind walked about, looking up at the cliff. His mother came out and sat down by his side; he wanted to hear stories about what was far away, for now the goat no longer satisfied him. So she told him how once everything could talk: the mountain talked to the stream, and the stream to the river, the river to the sea, and the sea to the sky; but then he asked if the sky did not talk to any one; and the sky talked to the clouds, the clouds to the trees, the trees to the grass, the grass to the flies, the flies to the animals, the animals to the children, the children to the grown-up people; and so it went on, until it had gone round, and no one could tell where it had begun.

Oeyvind looked at the mountain, the trees, the sky, and had never really seen them before. The cat came out at that moment, and lay down on the stone before the door in the sunshine.

"What does the cat say?" asked Oeyvind, pointing. His mother sang:

"'At evening softly shines the sun, The cat lies lazy on the stone. Two small mice, Cream, thick, and nice, Four bits of fish, I stole behind a dish, And am so lazy and tired, Because so well I have fared,'