[Footnote 2: Translated by H.R.G.]

Thus he learned what all were saying, even to the ant crawling in the
moss and the worm working in the bark.

The same summer his mother undertook to teach him to read. He had had
books for a long time, and wondered how it would be when they, too,
should begin to talk. Now the letters were transformed into beasts and
birds and all living creatures; and soon they began to move about
together, two and two; _a_ stood resting beneath a tree called _b_, _c_
came and joined it; but when three or four were grouped together they
seemed to get angry with one another, and nothing would then go right.
The farther he advanced the more completely he found himself forgetting
what the letters were; he longest remembered _a_, which he liked best;
it was a little black lamb and was on friendly terms with all the rest;
but soon _a_, too, was forgotten, the books no longer contained
stories, only lessons.

Then one day his mother came in and said to him,--

"To-morrow school begins again, and you are going with me up to the
gard."

Oyvind had heard that school was a place where many boys played
together, and he had nothing against that. He was greatly pleased; he
had often been to the gard, but not when there was school there, and he
walked faster than his mother up the hill-side, so eager was he. When
they came to the house of the old people, who lived on their annuity, a
loud buzzing, like that from the mill at home, met them, and he asked