all day?'

'Neither well nor ill,' replied Gudbrand. When I got to the town, I
could find no one there to buy our cow, and so I traded her off for a
horse.'

'For a horse!' said the wife. 'An excellent idea, and I thank you with
all my heart. We can go to church, then, in a wagon, like plenty of
other folks who look down upon us, but are no better than we. If we
choose to keep a horse and can feed him, we have a right to do it, I
suppose, for we ask no odds of anybody. Where is the horse? We must put
him into the stable.'

'I did not bring him all the way home,' answered Gudbrand, 'for, on the
road, I changed my mind; I exchanged the horse for a hog.'

'Come, now,' said the wife, 'that's just what I'd have done, in your
place! Thanks, a hundred times over! Now, when my neighbors come to see
me, I'll have, like everybody else, a bite of ham to offer them. What
need had we of a horse? The folks around us would have said, "See the
saucy things! they think it beneath them to walk to church." Let us put
the hog in a pen!'

'I didn't bring him with me,' said Gudbrand, 'for on the way I exchanged
him for a she-goat.'

'Bravo!' said the good wife. 'What a sensible man you are! When I come
to think of it, what could I have done with a hog? The neighbors would
have pointed us out and have said, "Look at those people--all they make
they eat! But, with a she-goat, I shall have milk and cheese, not to