agrant birch-twigs for their beds, shaking out their blankets
of reindeer-skins, and helping her so kindly, that the good dame quite
forgot to be cross, and before she knew it, was telling them her very,
very best story, that she always kept for Sundays.

[Illustration]

So the hours went by, and the children almost wearied themselves
wondering what father Peder would bring from the fair.

"I should like a little reindeer for my sledge," said Olaf.

"I should like a fur coat and fur boots," said Erik; "I was cold last
winter."

You see, these children did not really know anything about toys, so
could not wish for them.

"_I_ should like a little sister," said Olga, wistfully. "There are two
of you boys for everything, and that is so nice; but there is only one
of me, ever, and that is _so_ lonely."

And the little maid sighed; for besides these three, there were no
children in the village. The brawny wood-cutters who lived in groups in
the huts around, and who came home at night-fall to cook their own
suppers and sleep on rude pallets before the fires, were the only
other persons whom the little maiden knew; and sometimes the two boys
(as boys will do to their sisters) teased and laughed at her, because
she was timid, and because her little legs were too short to climb up
on the great pile of logs where they loved to play. So it was no wonder
that she longed for a playmate like herself.

"Hi!" cried the boys, both together; "one might be sure you would wish
for something silly! What should we do with _two_ girls, indeed?"

"But father said he would bring 'something nice,' and _I_ think girls
are the very nicest things in the world," replied Olga, sturdily.

There would certainly have been more serious words, but just then good
grandmother Ingeborg called "supper," and away scampered the hungry
little party to their evening meal of brown bread and cream, to which
was added, as a treat that night, a bit of goat's-milk cheese.

During midsummer in Norway the sun does not set for nearly ten weeks,
and only when little heads nod, and bright eyes shut and refuse to
open, do children know that it is "sleep-time." So on this day, though
the little hearts longed to wait for father's coming, six heavy lids
said "no," and soon the tired children were sleeping soundly on their
sweet, fresh beds of birch-twigs.

[Illustration: OLAF GIVES KRIKEL A RIDE IN HIS SLED.]

A few miles beyond Lyngen, on the north, a little co