Naturally the advent of three _kärra_ created considerable sensation, and the old woman had immediately hurried to call her husband, so that he also might enjoy a look at the strangers. Consequently, he stood in the doorway awaiting our arrival.
Of course they neither of them wore any shoes or stockings. Even the richer peasants, who possess shoes or fur-lined boots for winter use, more often than not walk barefoot in the summer, while stockings are unknown luxuries, a piece of rag occasionally acting as a substitute.
The old lady's short serge skirt was coarsely woven, her white shirt was loose and clean, her apron was striped in many colours, after the native style, and all were "woven by herself," she told us with great pride. On her hair she wore a black cashmere kerchief. Her face might have belonged to a woman of a hundred, or a witch of the olden days, it was so wrinkled and tanned. Her hands were hard and horny, and yet, after half an hour's conversation, we discovered she was only about fifty-five, and her man seventy. But what a very, very old pair they really seemed. Weather-beaten and worn, poorly fed during the greater part of their lives, they were emaciated, and the stooping shoulders and deformed hands denoted hard work and a gray life. They seemed very jolly, nevertheless, this funny old pair. Perhaps it was our arrival, or perhaps in the warm sunny days they have not time to look on the dark side of things while gathering in the little tufts of grass that grow among the rocky boulders, drying birch leaves for the cow for winter, attending to the small patch of rye--their greatest earthly possession--or mending up the _Savupirtti_ ere the first snows of October are upon them, that made them so cheerful.
The old woman was much more romantically inclined than the man. The Finnish character is slow and does not rush into speech; but a friendly pat on one grandchild's head, and a five-penni piece to the other, made our hostess quite chirpy. "May God's blessing accompany your journey," she said at parting; "may He protect the English ladies."
We got into cordial relations by degrees, and our friend the student, seeing a piece of woven band hanging up, asked its use.