I have him then?"

The justness of expression, the sincerity, is especially impressive
when Oeyvind's Mother came out and sat down by his side when the goat
no longer satisfied him and he wanted to hear stories of what was far
away. There is emotional harmony too, because the words suggest the
free freshness of the mountain air and the landscape which rose round
about the Boy and his Mother.

So she told him how once everything could talk: "The
mountain talked to the stream, and the stream to the river,
the river to the sea, and the sea to the sky."--But then he
asked if the sky did not talk to any one: "And the sky
talked to the clouds, the clouds to the trees, the trees to
the grass, the grass to the flies, the flies to the animals,
the animals to the children, the children to the grown-up
people...." Oeyvind looked at the mountain, the trees, and
the sky and had never seen them before.

There is delicacy or emotional harmony also in the Mother's song. When
Oeyvind asked, "What does the Cat say?" his Mother sang:--

At evening softly shines the sun.
The cat lies lazy on the stone.
Two small mice,
Cream, thick and nice,
Four bits of fish,
1 stole behind a dish,
And am so lazy and tired,
Because so well I have fared.