broke
in the vestry? Well--that was exactly what I had to do, if you please.

CHAPTER XII

AT GOODFIELDS

Now you shall hear about my summer vacation and all sorts of things.

We stayed at a farm in the country in a high valley. The farm was called
Goodfields, and they certainly were good fields, for such fat horses,
and such round cows, and such rich milk I never saw before in all my
life. For the horses could hardly get between the shafts of the
wagons--that is really true--and the cows were like trolls' cows; the
trolls' cows (in the fairy stories) are so well taken care of that they
shine so you can almost see your face in them, you know. The Goodfields
cows could thank old Kari, the milkmaid, for their plumpness.

Kari is seventy and looks very, very old.

All through the week she never sat down, but went puttering about the
whole day long; on Sunday evenings she sat out on the hill and smoked
her clay pipe. I used to lie beside her on the grass.

"The horse and the man
Have to bear all they can.
But the cow and the wife
Fare the hardest in life,"

said old Kari. And therefore she always raked away the best hay from the
horses and stuffed the cows with it.

It was out on the hill that Kari told about the Goodfields brownie in
the old days. Old Kari's mother had often driven in a sledge over
Goodfields hill while the brownie stood behind on the runner chuckling
and laughing. But the queer thing was that when they stopped at the top
of the hill or down in the valley, they didn't see him, but no sooner
had they started off than there was the brownie on the runner again.

It is really horrid that there are no brownies in the world any more!

Goodfields lay high up among the mountains. There were great green hills
and meadows stretching down towards the fjord, and dark spruce forests
above on the mountain, and far below, the still, shining fjord. And
behind each other as far as we could see there were just mountains,
exquisite blue mountains, rising into the bright sunny air.

The buildings were very big; there was nothing small at Goodfields, two
big main houses with big drawing-rooms and big canopied beds and big
down puffs, and big goats' milk cheeses like mountains, and big
milk-pans.

That's the way it was at Goodfields, beauty and plenty everywhere. And
it all belonged to Mother Goodfields. And she was the nicest person in
the world, for she was so kind. She wasn't the leas