Then there would always be three or four
evenings in succession when Stoeffi wanted to go away early; then the
brothers had to stay and work, and this led to many a quarrel, with heavy
blows which regularly fell upon Sami.
So he never had any happy days. But every evening he could be alone with
his thoughts of his grandmother, of all the beautiful bygone days and all
the good words she had spoken to him. Nobody troubled him, or called to
him, or pulled him then, as usually happened all day long.
Thus the Summer and Autumn passed away, and a cold Winter had come. There
was no more work to be done in the fields and meadows, but there were all
sorts of things to be done to help the farmer in the barn and his wife in
the house and the kitchen. This Sami had to do.
Meanwhile their own three boys could go to school, which had now begun
again, for they had to get some education. Sami could get that by and by.
In the Summer he had acquired a good deal of quickness and now did his
work so skilfully that the farmer said a couple of times:
"I would not have believed it, for in the Summer he was always the last."
Sami now thought that everything would go easier than in the Summer, but
something came which was much harder to bear than the extra burden of
work, which was too much for the others.
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