There was no end of work--weeding and
thinning out--and Nils was already in the thick of the hay-making.
He was the same splendid, earnest farmer as ever. At the first rest, while
the horses were feeding, he took me out over the ground to look at the
crops. Everything was doing well; but it had been a late spring that year,
and the cat's-tail was barely forming as yet, while the clover had just
begun to show bloom. The last rain had beaten down a lot of the first-year
grass, and it could not pick up again, so Nils had put on the
mowing-machine.
We walked back home through waving grass and corn; there was a whispering
in the winter rye and the stout six-rowed barley. Nils, who had not
forgotten his schooling, called to mind that beautiful line of Bjornson's:
"_Beginning like a whisper in the corn one summer day_."
"Time to get the horses out again," said Nils, stepping out a little. And
waving his hand once more out over the fields, he said: "What a harvest
we'll have this year if we can only get it safely in!"
So Grindhusen went off to work in the fields, and I fell to on the
painting.
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