What would you say if you saw Brunhild drive up to your back door? What would you do if you discovered a Norse goddess placidly surveying you from a green wagon-seat? How would you act if you beheld a big blonde Valkyr suddenly introducing herself into your little earthly affairs?
Well, can you wonder that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes on. I say that without doubt, and without exaggeration. And what made the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen--for Dinky-Dunk will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his hands on. I simply held my breath as I stared up at her, high on her wagon-seat, blocked out in silhouette against the pale sky-line, a Brunhild with cowhide boots on. She wore a pale blue petticoat and a Swedish looking black shawl with bright-colored flowers worked along the hem. She had no hat. But she had two great ropes of pale gold hair, almost as thick as my arm, and hanging almost as low as her knees. She looked colossal up on the wagon-seat, but when she got down on the ground she was not so immense. She is, however, a strapping big woman, and I don't think I ever saw such shoulders! She is Olympian, Titanic! She makes me think of the Venus de Milo; there's such a largeness and calmness and smoothness of surface about her. I suppose a Saint-Gaudens might say that her mouth was too big and a Gibson might add that her nose hadn't the narrow rectitude of a Greek statue's, but she's a beautiful, a beautiful--"woman" was the word I was going to write, but the word "animal" just bunts and shoves itself in, like a stabled cow insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as only animal, you must at least accept her as a perfect one. Her mouth is large, but I never saw such red lips, full and red and dewy. Her forehead is low and square, but milky smooth, and I know she could crack a chicken-bone between those white teeth of hers. Even her tongue, I noticed, is a watermelon red. She must be healthy. Dinky-Dunk says she's a find, that she can drive a double-seeder as well as any man in the West, and that by taking her for the season he gets the use of the ox-team as well. He warned me not to ask her about her family, as only a few weeks ago her father and younger brother were burned to death in their shack, a hundred miles or so north of us.
