In the wood-cutter’s home lived some one else whom the children loved dearly.  This was old grandmother Ingeborg, who was almost as good as the dear mother who had gone to take their baby sister up to heaven, and had never yet come back to them.

All day long, while the merry children played about the door, or watched their father swing the bright swift ax that fairly made the chips dance, Dame Ingeborg spun and knit and worked in the little hut, that was as clean and bright and cheery as a hut with only one door and a tiny window could be.  But then it had such a grand, wide chimney-place, where even in summer great logs and branches of fir and pine blazed brightly, lighting up all the corners of the little room that the sunbeams could not reach.

Here, when tired with play, the children would gather, and throwing themselves down on the soft wolf-skins that lay on the floor before the fire, beg dear grandmother Ingeborg for a story.  And such stories as she told them!

So the long winter went peacefully and happily by, and at last all hearts were gladdened at sight of the glorious sun, as he slowly and grandly rose above the snow-topped mountains, bringing to them sunshine and flowers, and the golden summer days.

One bright day in July, father Peder went to the fair in Lyngen.

“Be good, my children,” said he, as he kissed them good-bye, “and I will bring you something nice from the fair.”

But they were nearly always good, so he really need not have said that.

Now, it was a very wonderful thing indeed for the wood-cutter to go from home in summer, and grandmother Ingeborg was quite disturbed.

“Ah!” said she, “something bad will happen, I know.”

But the children comforted her, and ran about so merrily, bringing fresh, fragrant birch-twigs for their beds, shaking out their blankets of reindeer-skins, and helping her so kindly, that the good dame quite forgot to be cross, and before she knew it, was telling them her very, very best story, that she always kept for Sundays.

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So the hours went by, and the children almost wearied themselves wondering what father Peder would bring from the fair.

“I should like a little reindeer for my sledge,” said Olaf.

“I should like a fur coat and fur boots,” said Erik; “I was cold last winter.”

You see, these children did not really know anything about toys, so could not wish for them.

“I should like a little sister,” said Olga, wistfully.  “There are two of you boys for everything, and that is so nice; but there is only one of me, ever, and that is so lonely.”

And the little maid sighed; for besides these three, there were no children in the village.  The brawny wood-cutters who lived in groups in the huts around, and who came home at night-fall to cook their own suppers and sleep on rude pallets before the fires, were the only other persons whom the little maiden knew; and sometimes the two boys (as boys will do to their sisters) teased and laughed at her, because she was timid, and because her little legs were too short to climb up on the great pile of logs where they loved to play.  So it was no wonder that she longed for a playmate like herself.