The farther he advanced the more completely he found himself forgetting
what the letters were; he longest remembered _a_, which he liked best;
it was a little black lamb and was on friendly terms with all the rest;
but soon _a_, too, was forgotten, the books no longer contained
stories, only lessons.
Then one day his mother came in and said to him,--
"To-morrow school begins again, and you are going with me up to the
gard."
Oyvind had heard that school was a place where many boys played
together, and he had nothing against that. He was greatly pleased; he
had often been to the gard, but not when there was school there, and he
walked faster than his mother up the hill-side, so eager was he. When
they came to the house of the old people, who lived on their annuity, a
loud buzzing, like that from the mill at home, met them, and he asked
his mother what it was.
"It is the children reading," answered she, and he was delighted, for
thus it was that he had read before he learned the letters.
On entering he saw so many children round a table that there could not
be more at church; others sat on their dinner-pails along the wall,
some stood in little knots about an arithmetic table; the
school-master, an old, gray-haired man, sat on a stool by the hearth,
filling his pipe. They all looked up when Oyvind and his mother came
in, and the clatter ceased as if the mill-stream had been turned off.
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