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
not dare sit idle and listen to the birds. But every time he had
looked longingly there and sent a whistle from a distance as greeting
to the birds.
From the old house on the hillside, from which one could look down at the
ash-trees and the wall, he had brought a little kettle to the tinker, and
was delighted at the thought of taking it back again, for then he could
look down there for a moment and perhaps hear the birds.
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