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She was in complete Lapp costume a blue cloth gown with wide sleeves, trimmed with scarlet, and a curious pear-shaped cap of the same material, upon her head. She sat upon the floor, on a deerskin, and employed herself in twisting reindeer sinews, which she rolled upon her cheek with the palm of her hand, while I was sketching her.
I had been saying that I was just twenty, and Jim said that he was twenty-seven. "Then I am the most old of the three," said de Lapp. We laughed at this, for by our reckoning he might almost have been our father. "But not by so much," said he, arching his brows. "I was nine-and-twenty in December."
The old herder warned me, "No Lapps, no deer"; but I thought too much in terms of Mission finances, the Government having withdrawn their grant toward the herders' salaries. Trusting to the confidence in their own ability of the locally trained men, I therefore let the Lapp herders go home. The love of the Lapps for their deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel, and seems a master passion.
These favorable features, nevertheless, were far from reconciling me to the idea of a trial of Lapp life. When I saw the filth, the poverty, and discomfort in which they lived, I decided that the present experience was all-sufficient.
There must be something mighty taking about the Lapp girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up North are always afraid their boys will run after them. In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game of 'Pussy Wants a Corner, on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn't play any more.
At all events, the ladies have a doorway quite to themselves, which, doubtless, they consider a far greater privilege than the seclusion of a separate boudoir. Hunting and fishing are the principal employments of the Lapp tribes; and to slay a bear is the most honourable exploit a Lapp hero can achieve.
While at Kautokeino I completed my Lapp outfit by purchasing a scarlet cap, stuffed with eider down, a pair of boellinger, or reindeer leggings, and the komager, or broad, boat-shaped shoes, filled with dry soft hay, and tightly bound around the ankles, which are worn by everybody in Lapland.
Now and again the monotony of the wilderness was broken by the sight of a passing Lapp, or by something happening to one of the animals on the place, then all would be as before. Once there came a number of men at once; they rested at Sellanraa, and had some food and a dish of milk; they asked Isak and Oline about the path across the hills; they were marking out the telegraph line, they said.
“So was my mother’s father,” murmured Lena, “but that’s all the good it does us! My father’s father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married a Lapp. I guess that’s what’s the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will out.” “A real Lapp, Lena?” I exclaimed. “The kind that wear skins?” “I don’t know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapp all right, and his folks felt dreadful about it.
The Lapp, after the manner of his race, was easily frightened, and cowered back, terrified at the bonde's menacing gesture and fierce tone, but quickly bethinking himself of the liberal fee he clutched in his palm, he volunteered a warning to this kingly old man with the streaming white hair and beard, and his keen eyes that were already fixed on the dark sweep of the rough, uneven road winding towards the Altenfjord.
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