Sami was tired. He went immediately to the wagon and climbed up from the back, and was able to slip in under the big cover. There was a little room where he could lie down, and next him came the four little children, one after another. Sami sat down and said his evening prayer. Then he thought of his grandmother for a while, and what she would say if she could see him thus in the wagon, and know that he would have to sleep all the time in his clothes, and if only she could see how it looked in the wagon, so dirty and in disorder. She had been so neat and orderly about everything and had kept him so clean from a baby up. But she had never spoken to him about this, as about other things which he must avoid, and perhaps the people were quite God-fearing; then he ought to stay with them. That would be as his grandmother wished. Then he placed his bundle under his head, and went peacefully to sleep. CHAPTER SIXTH SAMI SINGS TOO Sami had now been working five days for the tinker, and had passed his nights in the wagon. He was well treated, for the man and his wife were pleased with him. Every day Sami dragged along such a pile of old pans, pots and kettles, that they both wondered where he found them. His grandmother had not charged him in vain to do everything he had to do as well as he possibly could, because the dear Lord always saw what he was doing. He never loitered on the way, and if a woman was going to send him away quickly and would not listen to him, then he looked at her so beseechingly that she would find an old pan somewhere and bring it out. From morning till night he ran with the greatest zeal, in order to get as much work as possible for his master, and the praise he won every evening he enjoyed as much as the savoury soup which followed. 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.