grandmother had not charged him in vain to do everything he had to do
as well as he possibly could, because the dear Lord always saw what he
was doing.

He never loitered on the way, and if a woman was going to send him away
quickly and would not listen to him, then he looked at her so
beseechingly that she would find an old pan somewhere and bring it out.
From morning till night he ran with the greatest zeal, in order to get as
much work as possible for his master, and the praise he won every evening
he enjoyed as much as the savoury soup which followed.

Nevertheless Sami was not very well contented. Every evening as he sat in
the wagon, he had to think what his grandmother would say to all the dirt
around him, and things pleased him less and less. The woman did not do
for the little children as his grandmother had done for him. All four
crawled around in the dirt and looked so that Sami didn't care to have
anything to do with them. If they cried they were knocked this way and
that, and at night the woman took up one after another from the ground,
put it in the wagon, pulled the dirty grey blanket over them and went
away again.

The largest boy could talk quite well. He could have learned a little
prayer long before this, but the woman never taught him any.

Such a homesickness for his grandmother now arose in Sami's heart every
evening that he had to bury his head deep in his bundle, so that no one
would hear him sob.

Often on his expeditions he would come near the wall, under the
ash-trees, but he never went over to it, for he had to work and did