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"Should you really like to go out to work?" Kjersti inquired. "Yes, indeed," Lisbeth said, "if it were not for leaving mother." "Well, we will not think about that any more at present," said Kjersti, "but I will go up and talk with your mother about it some time in the spring. We certainly ought to go into the house now, so that you can have time to take a little food before leaving.
She took up the bundle, drew her face with its turned-up nose tip back into its little shawl as far as she could so that Kjersti should not see the tears in her eyes, and then bent down and lifted the pail. At that Kjersti said: "Oh, yes! the pail! I quite forgot it. Are you willing to exchange pails with me if I give you one that will never get empty?"
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.
During the last few weeks there had not been milk enough even for Randi's and Lisbeth's coffee. To go to Svehaugen, the nearest farm, for milk was no short trip; and milk was scarce there too, as Randi well knew. Besides, she could not spare the time to go. She had to finish spinning Kjersti Hoel's wool.
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. But now everything was going to be different.
Lisbeth saw that Kjersti noticed the things at once, but she was not in the least embarrassed, for Kjersti only smiled kindly and said: "I see that you are thinking about your mother to-day, Lisbeth, and that is right; but now come with me into my room. There is something I wish to talk with you about."
She knew very well that she was the principal cow of the herd, and that the first place when they went out and in through the cow-house door belonged to her; but she knew also that even she had to be on her best behavior when Kjersti, the mistress of the whole farm, did her the honor of clasping around her neck the cow collar with its bell, emblem of dignity and power, and of unfastening the chain that held her in the stall.
Whether or not her illness was caused, as she thought, by drinking so much black coffee, certain it is that when Kjersti Hoel's wool was all spun Randi felt a tightness in her chest, and when she got up the next morning and tried to get ready to go to Hoel with the spinning, she was seized with such a sudden dizziness that she had to go back to bed again. She was too weak for anything else.
And they needed something, surely, for there had not been time to eat anything along the road that day. When the milkmaid had dismounted from her horse Kjersti took her hand and said, "Welcome home!"
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.
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