[Illustration: A PROSPEROUS LAPP SETTLEMENT.]
It was the dairy-bedroom we sat in, the room of state and honour, and as it was comparatively free from mosquitoes--there were some paltry dozen or so to remind us of our immunity--we rolled cigarettes in peace, and Hayter produced a sketch-book. The old woman who had charge of us was shown what was wanted, and took up her position, nothing loath. She stood like a professional model--a rare thing in this fidgety land--and the sketch progressed with speed.
A very happy likeness it was, and the old woman was amazed to see herself for the first time in all a long life on paper. But she was not altogether pleased. On some occasion during her days she had broken a leg, which (according to the primitive method of the country) had been set with a reef in it. When she walked this gave her a prodigious limp. When she stood at rest upon both feet, it naturally skewed her shoulders well out of the horizontal. The sketch faithfully reproduced this trait, and the old lady objected in her top key. She wanted to be drawn straight as she would like to be, and not with rugged face and halting body, as the accident of years and weather had happened to make her. She was very like her sisters in more favoured climes, this middle-aged dame of Lapland.
But she did not stay arguing long. Work could not stop. She left us in the dairy and went away to the kitchen, and the _whirr_ of a spinning-wheel told us what was her employment.
Hayter's pencil, however, was not permitted to rest. Johann had evidently exploited its powers, and presently he came in half-dragging, half-leading, a younger, more comely girl, and whom he explained he was sweet on himself. He backed her up against the wall, arranged her hands and her head-kerchief, and explained that he would like a portrait of her executed in the best style for his own personal use and convenience. Her name he said was Margrete, and he mentioned that she was famed for her skill in milking cows in the summer and making clothes during the long nights of winter. The gay _matsoreo_ which he was at that moment wearing himself was the outcome of her clever knife and needle.
In view of the forty-nine mile tramp ahead, Johann had annexed a bundle of the fine, dried grass they use here in the shoes, and whilst the sketch of his sweetheart was progressing--by the way she was only one of his many loves--he dumped himself down acrobat-fashion on the floor and took off his foot-gear, and arranged the packing of grass therein with vast deliberateness and care. A small, solemn child, all bumpy about the head from bites, came in, stark-naked, from the other room, and stayed to stare. A couple of dogs--stout, gray, wire-coated fellows, like the dogs of the Eskimo--added themselves unobtrusively to the audience.