h sense, or learning either," said Kaspar. "But that's the
way it goes in the world,--one clever one and one stupid one come
together; and so Oleana manages everything, you see."

Even with Oleana to manage, however, things had often been bad enough at
Henrik-hut. They had almost starved at times, Grandmother, Kaspar,
Oleana and all the nine children.

"It isn't worth speaking of now," said Oleana, "the hard scratching we
have had many a time. But when the summer boarders,--fine city
folk,--came to Goodfields, luck came to Henrik-hut."

Oleana did the washing for these summer guests and earned money that
way, you see.

"It's just as if all this money were given to me!" said Oleana. "For our
Lord fills the brooks with water and the work I put on the clothes is
nothing to count."

There were beds everywhere in the one room of the hut, and what with
shelves and clothes, wooden bowls and buckets and even shiny
scrap-pictures on the walls, there wasn't a vacant spot anywhere. The
floor was shiningly clean, however, and strewn with juniper boughs, and
the sun shone cheerily through the greenish window-panes, on
Grandmother and the nine tow-headed children, and all.

Oleana had been married twenty-one years and in all that time had never
owned a clock. Through the long darkness of the winter afternoons and
evenings, when the snow lay thick and heavy on the pine-trees round
about, and the roads were blocked in every direction with high drifts,
there they would be in the hut;--Oleana and Grandmother and the nine
tow-heads and the husband without much sense under his hat,--and not
even the clever Oleana would have the remotest idea what o'clock it was.
In summer she looked at the sun to tell the time, and on clear winter
nights at the stars; though to see these, she had to get up in the cold
and breathe on the thickly frosted window-pane to make a space to peep
through.

One day while I was at Henrik-hut talking with Oleana, it occurred to me
that we summer-boarder-children might put our money together and buy a
clock for Oleana. The grown-up people wanted to help, and so we got a
lot of money; and a big clock with a white dial and red roses was bought
in the city.

Then it was such fun surprising Oleana with it! We had an awfully jolly
time. A message was sent to her asking her to come to Goodfields; and
down she came with her hair wet and smooth, and a clean stiff
working-dress on, but having no notion what we wanted