t bit cross when we
tagged after her in the dairy and the grain-house, and we might eat all
the green gooseberries in the garden, if we wanted to. And everybody who
was poor and sick went to Mother Goodfields, as all the people in the
neighborhood called her. She was big and strong and earnest and helped
them all. She was a widow and had no children, and it seemed to her so
lonely on the big farm that she took summer boarders.

On the fjord the little steamboat went up one day and down the next,
with foreigners who sat stretching their legs out on the deck and stared
sleepily at the mountains.

I am not fond of mountains, to tell the truth. Ugh! when you stay among
them it seems so cramped and horrid. You feel just like a little ant at
last. No, give me the sea, with its seaweed tossing on the waves, and
its rocking boats and vessels, and the reefs and the fresh wind.

There were many times at Goodfields when it was so downright hot in the
valley that I felt like crying when I thought of the sea. My brother
Karsten felt exactly the same.

There were eight mothers and eleven children and five teachers at
Goodfields that summer. I can't describe them, it would take too long;
besides all grown up women are alike, it seems to me. There were only
two big children of my age at Goodfields, Petter Kloed and Andrine Voss.
Petter Kloed was very elegant; only think, he wore yellow gloves way off
there in the country. And what he liked best in the world was ice-cream
and champagne. Never in my life had I tasted either ice-cream or
champagne, but I didn't say so, for that would be awkward. And then
Petter Kloed was not really nice to his mother, I think, and that was a
great shame, for Mrs. Kloed doted on him, and would give him anything if
he only looked at it.

Andrine Voss was hardly pretty at all, but she had awfully long
eyelashes and when she half shut her eyes she looked very mysterious.
But she only looked so, she wasn't the least bit mysterious, for she was
my best friend and did everything I wanted her to the whole summer.

We have decided that she shall marry a county judge, and I a doctor,
but we will live in the same house and have just the same number of
children. And we are going to be friends all our lives.

The other children who were at Goodfields that summer were just little
ones, some roly-polys and some thin, pale, little things who were
dressed in laces and took malt extract, and had legs no bigger than