"Why do there have to be such stupid brats in some families?" Helen asked herself. "Why couldn't all the children of the family be of the same age?"

At lunchtime the girls picked reluctantly at their stewed vegetables. They had no appetite. They would have gladly placed their plates in front of the poor starving Kristjan if grandmother had not decided to give him nothing but warm milk because of his wound.

After lunch they played at pigsty. Kristjan played the part of the pigs, and the girls were the pig-tenders. They gave Kristjan some 'food' and weighed him on the couch. When Kristjan got tired of grunting, the pig-tenders did some of the grunting themselves. Startled, grandmother appeared in the doorway and announced that she could not take that noise any more.

"Must you, little imps, turn everything into a horseplay?"

Irja tried to explain that the game they had played was not horseplay but pig-play. Giving up hope of straightening them up grandmother said,

"All right, but try not to make such a noise all the time." And she returned to the kitchen.

"This is the most boring day in my life," complained Irja.

"If the rain were three times heavier the day would be three times as boring," was Helen's opinion.

Irja shook her head. "I don't think so. Then the roof would finally leak and we would have to use umbrellas in the house. That would be fun."

Then Helen's father dropped in for lunch. He asked, "Why are the kids moulding at home? You aren't made of sugar to be afraid of a little rain, are you? The kids from the new house were all playing outside. Sass had only his shirt on."

Now Helen began to cadge a ride to the new house from her father. She whispered to Irja, "You'd never guess how many children there are in the new house — at least seven."

"How new is the house? Recently built?" asked Irja.

"Well, now that I think about it, I guess it has always been there in the middle of the village," said Helen, a little embarrassed. "It's just a manner of speaking, the new house. Because it has two storeys but no cow-shed, no orchard, no kitchen garden, that's why."

Father, smiled, "That house is simply the newest dwelling-house in the village. People who have recently come to work on our state farm live there. When the next large dwelling-house is completed people will call that the new house. But I don't have time to take you up and down in my car at the busiest time of the day. I'm no taxi."

"We could come back on foot. We'll be very careful," promised Helen.

"I must first thing go to the workshop," father wouldn't give a direct answer. "Well, get ready and be quick about it. Just one thing: Kristjan will stay at home."

The last remark did not distress the girls, quite the contrary. Grandmother stood up for Kristjan. She thought it would be a good thing if the doctor at the medical centre had a look at the boy's mouth, but father checked the wound himself and said that the boy was as sound as a bell. Hadn't he been told often enough not to run about with a pencil in his mouth. Let that be a lesson to him. Then he promised to take the girls to the centre after he had been to the workshop.

Helen and Irja stood beside the car waiting for father. The colour of the car reminded Irja of a frog. It had big wheels, and looked a bit like a lorry and a bit like a motor car.

"Look, the car has a raincoat too," said Irja. Helen turned her eyes to the car but did not see any raincoat.

"Don't you see that the roof of the car is made of cloth?"

"Oh, you mean that," said Helen. "All the Willis cars are like that, even when it's not raining. Some people call them Willis cars, and some call them jeeps or cross-country cars."

"Why, can't the other cars go across the country?"

Helen was annoyed. "You really are dense. It's because my father's car can move everywhere, even in places where other cars would get stuck, like mud or deep snow."

***

In front of the workshop there were several tractors and a small white car. The girls jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped. Helen's father shook hands with all the men that had gathered in front of the workshop. Irja wondered if she and Helen too should do that. But the men began to talk shop and Helen said, "Let's go in to see Uncle Arno." She took Irja to the rear room of the workshop.

"Hello, Helen," said a man who looked like a bugbear in a hollow voice. Only in nightmares had Irja seen anybody as ugly as that. Helen, however, did not seem to be afraid of the iron-faced man and the thought that perhaps the man actually had a heart of gold crossed Irja's mind. Maybe he was under a spell or something.

Then the man removed his iron mask and put it on the table with a click, turning into a nice-looking man with rosy cheeks.

"Wanted to scare us, didn't you?" asked Irja with relief.

"That's called an arc welding helmet," explained Helen. Uncle Arno let the girls look through the flip-up window in the helmet.

"It's really funny," Irja commented, "spectacles are usually made so that people could see better but these glasses make the whole world look dark."

"This window is meant to protect the eyes," explained Uncle Arno. "The welding sparks are very bright and very hot."

"Don't do any welding then," suggested Irja.

Uncle Arno smiled. "But that's my job. How else can iron objects be mended if the iron-smith refuses to weld. I'm an iron-smith and welder by profession. You can't use needle and thread to join pieces of iron."

Irja looked around. Indeed, almost all the things she could see in the workshop were made of iron. There was an iron table, iron crates, bars and tongs made of iron, not to mention all the other strange-looking tools. There was also a big iron box on four high legs. It was filled with stones that gave off heat. Above the box there was a big angular tube made of sheet metal.

"I reckon you've got lots of welding to do around here," commented Irja. "Even your fireplace seems to be made of iron."

The iron-smith smiled, "My dear girl, this is no ordinary fireplace. This is a forge. Look!"

The man pushed a button on the wall and a gust of wind swept out of the tube under the forge. The grey stones turned hot red.

"They look like precious stones now," said Irja in wonderment.

"It's coal," explained Uncle Arno and placed one end of an iron bar on the stones. Where it touched the coal the bar turned golden red. Uncle Arno lifted the bar with tongs on an iron block and struck it a couple of times with a hammer on the spot where it glowed. Sparkles flew in the air and the end of the bar became flat. Then Uncle Arno plunged the bar with a sizzle into another iron crate that was filled with water.

"Now I've made a crow-bar out of an ordinary iron bar," said Uncle Arno.

"How many crow-bars do you manage to do in one day?" Irja asked as matter-of-factly as she knew how to. She was pleased with herself — the question was put as coolly as the reporters on the TV did. Uncle Arno smiled again, "It's no child's play to work here. There are hundreds of things to be done every day. Ploughshares and harrows, combine harvesters and tractors — in autumn they all need quick repairs."

"I see," said Irja. She had run out of questions. "Uncle Arno can do everything," said Helen. "Father says he's got golden hands."

"Well, not quite everything," said the iron-smith good-humouredly. Then in came a great number of men together with Helen's father. They approached Uncle Arno and began to talk all at once and wave their hands. All that Irja could make out of their talk was that the men were tractor drivers and each one of them wanted Uncle Arno to fix his tractor first. Among the men there was also the young tractor driver who had been angry with the children in the potato field. In the workshop he was not half as important and courageous. When speaking to Uncle Arno he used the same tone of voice Irja did when cadging her mother for candies.

"I say, Arno," the voice of Helen's father rang out above the others, "you'd better take on Viktor's machine first. They forecast fine weather for tomorrow, so the potato field will be crowded with harvesters and we can't open the furrows by hand, can we?"

"OK," replied Uncle Arno and the young tractor driver gave him a broad smile.

Helen's father gave a few more orders to the men who listened to him with a serious expression and then replied, "OK, we'll do it."

"Girls, get back into the car," Helen's father commanded. "I'll drop you off at home on my way."

"But father, you promised to take us to the new house," said Helen whiningly.

"The rain has become three times heavier, it's no weather for children to be playing outside."

The rain had grown heavier indeed... But if even weather, larger than the entire Estonia, was bad-tempered, why couldn't little girls be a bit naughty too? Helen and Irja blubbered by themselves a little, then they whimpered together and in the end they kept snuffling through their snotty noses.

"No matter where you are, out in the country or in town, you're always being dropped off at home, you're always forbidden to do this and that... No matter where you go, the grown-ups are full of their own importance... If they choose to keep their promises, they keep them, and if they don't, they just don't," Irja grumbled.

"When I grow up," said Helen, "I'll see to it that old people will have to sit at home all day long just dying of boredom, and they won't be allowed to watch TV after nine o'clock."

"Serve them right," was Irja's opinion.

Helen's father looked at the girls in the rear mirror and asked, "I wonder what's biting you, girls?"

Helen only snuffled, looking at the car window wet with rain.

"Must be some rain viper," suggested Irja.

***

The viper that had been biting Helen and Irja seemed to be venomous. At first the bad-temper viper made the girls angry with the grown-ups, but later on they fell out with each other as well. The quarrel started when neither of them wanted to be the Big Bad Wolf and both wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood. They just had made up their minds and that was it. Helen pulled at Irja's apron-strings until they came undone. Then Irja pulled off Helen's hair-band. Then Helen pulled Irja by hair. Then Irja struck Helen. And the words they kept flinging at each other! Such words cannot be printed in a book, not even in very small print. Such ugly words are prompted to children by some especially nasty viper whose secret wish it is that children should never be accepted to school. Because no teacher wants children who speak like that in her form. Anyway, Helen's mother did not.

Fortunately the nasty viper soon got sleepy and fell asleep, and before going to bed Helen and Irja made up again. Tucked in their beds, they were nibbling at the clusters of rowan-berries Helen's father had brought them in the evening. The rowan-berries were bitter and the girls puckered up their faces. This gave them a good opportunity to see what they would look like when they grew old. Both looked quite pretty.

"Tell me," Irja asked Helen, "is your father the most important man here in the country?"

"What do you mean by 'here in the country'?" Helen did not understand the question at first. "Here on the state farm? Yes, he is the most important man here on the state farm." She fell silent for a while and then added, "Only the manager of the state farm is more important than my father."

"I see," said Irja. So the tractor driver was more important than the schoolchildren, and Uncle Arno was more important than the tractor driver, and Helen's father was more important than Uncle Arno. And only the manager was more important than Helen's father. This made Irja sigh. "I guess because of this nasty rain viper nobody will tell us a bed-time story tonight," she said.

"Why don't you tell a story yourself?" suggested Helen. "Something about a viper."

Irja now remembered that mother had once read her a poem about a snake. She tilted her head and tried to recall it:

"A snake was sewing a party dress. It wouldn't go right, it was a mess. The side-seam made her spit with anger, the needle pricked into her finger. The toil was eating at her heart, the sting of needle still felt smart. The seams, oh my, to put it mildly, looked as if they'd been run up blindly: they zig-zagged wildly for a mile. The dress lacked cut as well as style. Do tell me, you unlucky snake, what do you call this thing you've made? Said snake, 'I think it's an OVERALL. Look, here's a zig-zag zipper drawn. I wonder if you'd be so kind, my thimble lost to help me find. If I don't wear this helmet bright the seams, it seems, won't come out right."'

Helen giggled, "That was nice. How do you do it?"

"Actually that was made up by my mother," Irja confessed. "She's a writer."

"I see," said Helen. "And what does your father do?"

Irja would have very much liked to say that her father was an even more important person than the manager of the state farm. But to tell such an obvious lie would not be very nice...

"My father's a... cosmonaut," she said instead.

"No kidding?" said Helen, sitting up in her bed. "You must tell me everything about him."

"Let's better go to sleep now," said Irja modestly. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."

She was already having scruples.

It was really very strange — when it was raining it seemed that the only thing there was in the world was rain: the grass, trees and roads were wet with rain, the air and the windows were streaky with it, and even on the clothes-line there were only raindrops hanging.

Fine weather was quite another matter: the leaves on the autumnal trees were bright yellow and red, the air was blue and trembling, and on the clothes-line snow-white and many-coloured laundry was flying in the wind like festive banners.

"A woman's work is never done," said grandmother when she had hung half of the laundry on the clothesline with the help of Irja and Helen. "Now there's the cow to be milked and the soup to be started... Poor me, when shall I find time to go to the grocery store? Heldur's working clothes are all dirty yet but there's not one cake of soap left in the whole house. As if someone kept eating it."

"Granny, please let us go to the grocery," asked Helen.

"Indeed." Grandmother seemed to be pleased with the offer. But then she shook her head and said doubtfully, "You'll get lost on the way... "

"No, we shan't, we promise. Please, grandmother, let us go," Helen begged, and Irja added, "I was top of the class in traffic regulations at the kindergarten."

"Well, we'll see about that," grandmother said. "Go and feed the rabbits first. The weather is just perfect for hanging the laundry out in the sun, it would be sinful to leave the work halfway done."

Such big armfuls of fresh grass were flung into the hutches of Motley Leida and her family that the rabbits had hardly enough room to turn round in them.

"I say, it's such a heavenly day for going shopping that it would be sinful to waste any more time," said Irja.

"Have you ever gone shopping on your own before?" asked Helen.

"Yes, I have," said Irja proudly. "Only it was in a game of shopping."

"Me, too," confessed Helen.

"You still want to go, do you?" asked grandmother, skimming froth off the broth. "Well, all right, but first try to find the boy."

"He's outside eating chocolate," said Irja.

"Is there anything safe from that boy?" grandmother grumbled, looking out of the window. Just then Kristjan came in. Smeared with chocolate all over, he announced importantly, "The laundry's dry. I checked it myself."

"Good God," grandmother cried out. Of course the laundry wasn't dry, but now all sheets were decorated with little brown fingermarks in sets of five on their lower edges.

"Well, girls, you go to the shop now," commanded grandmother. "I've got a few things to discuss with Kristjan."

She handed Helen the shopping bag and Irja, the purse. "Now try to remember: five cakes of laundry soap, the one that costs nineteen kopecks, two packets of detergent and two packets of Fermenta soaking powder. Got it?"

Helen repeated, "Five cakes of laundry soap, two packets of Fermenta for soaking and two packets of some detergent."

"Keep your eyes open for the traffic on the road," grandmother warned them. "And don't waste any time hanging about the shop afterwards. On top of other things I'll have to rinse the whole lot all over again."

To go shopping without grown-ups was very exciting. At first the girls went along the road holding each other by the hand. When they reached the big road Helen, as the one who knew the way, walked ahead and Irja, as the expert on traffic regulations, followed in her steps. They had not been walking long when suddenly a beige Volga car came to a stop beside them.

"Haven't you lost your way, girls?" asked the driver clad in a brown coat.

"No, we haven't. We're on our way to the shop," said Irja, and Helen added politely, "Hello."

"Hop in then," said the man, opening the rear door. "This is the manager of the state farm," whispered Helen.

The girls climbed into the car and it took off.

"So you, Helen, are now big enough to go shopping with your friend," said the manager of the state farm. "Yes, I am," replied Helen.

"And what's your name?" the manager asked Irja. "I'm Irja Raut. I'm five years and three months old," she answered quickly.

"There's a good girl."

"And her father is a cosmonaut," said Helen.

Irja's face turned red, "Oh, never mind that."

"I say, that's news," said the manager. "It was a pleasure meeting you."

The car stopped. On the right, under big trees there stood a house with large windows. Above the door there was a sign, in red letters, that read: TEEDLA GROCERY.

"Thanks for the ride," said the girls when they got out of the car.

"You promised to tell me about your father," Helen reminded Irja.

"Some other time," suggested Irja, "or else the shopping list will get all mixed up."

***

The Teedla grocery was not half as big as the supermarkets Irja had been to with her mother in the town. But strangely there was enough room for the most different things. There were buns and soap, fat and books, meat and bread, candy and copybooks for schoolchildren, Pepsi and canned soup, flour and even a bicycle.

The soap, detergents, electric bulbs and school supplies were laid out on the shelf right by the door. Probably to keep the children from the temptation, Pepsi and candy were situated farther in the room. The next shelves had room for bread and buns, then came goods packed in brown paper bags and those who could read the sign found out that those were CEREALS. In the white cold-storage counters there were bottles of milk and kefir and jars of sour cream. In the middle of the shop there was a shelf loaded with jars of jam, soup and sauerkraut. Next to them were bottles of juice and canned baby food. Right beside the counter there was a silvery revolving shelf for books. It was fun to turn it round but there were no children's books on it. On the other hand, the girls had not come for books, they were supposed to buy...

"Five cakes of laundry soap," said Helen, putting them into her shopping cart.

"Two packets of detergent," added Irja. "What was the third thing we had to buy? Peppermint?"

But there was no peppermint on the shelf. Besides, neither of the girls knew what this peppermint was supposed to look like.

Helen picked up her courage and asked the shop-assistant, "Can I have two peppermints, please?"

"You mean the gum?" asked the woman with a smile and put two small packets on the counter.

While the shop-assistant was adding up the cost of the goods using an abacus, Helen whispered to Irja, "One doesn't use gum to do the laundry, does one?"

"Maybe your grandmother likes to chew something while washing the clothes," said Irja.

Helen shook her head. Putting the change into the purse, Irja said, "Maybe she wanted us to have the gum as a reward."

"I've never seen her chew gum," said Helen. "She must've meant it for us all right."

They both unwrapped a slice of gum and popped it into their mouths.

"I wonder where you keep the Fermenta soaking powder?" a woman wearing a red kerchief asked the shop-assistant.

"Fermenta! That's what it was, not peppermint," said Helen.

"Over there, right behind the Pipi detergent," the shop-assistant guided the woman. Helen, too, took two blue-andwhite packets off the shelf and returned to the counter. But now it turned out that the purse contained two kopecks less than the amount of money needed.

"Take one packet then," suggested the shop-assistant. Tears welled in Helen's eyes.

"Granny told me to buy two packets."

"All right, give me one packet of the gum back then," said the shop-assistant. "Don't cry, child."

"We've just opened both of them," sighed Irja.

"Never mind, Helen," said the shop-assistant. "Your father will pay me these two kopecks next time he comes over."

"Don't blubber any more. It turned out all right, didn't it," Irja tried to cheer Helen up when they were outside on the doorsteps. "Just think what an important man your father is — his daughter can get detergent from the shop, free."

"Don't cosmonauts get detergent free?" asked Helen, her mood noticeably improving.

Irja shook her head. "Cosmonauts almost never get anything free. Only their space suits and the Kosmos jelly that comes in tubes. And when they happen to spill jelly on their space suits they must go to the shop and buy their own detergent."

Helen had stopped crying. "Has your father ever been to the Moon?" she asked.

"Not yet, but he's been to some smaller stars, you know, those very small stars that have no names, just numbers."

"What did he do there?"

"What could one do in a place like that — there's hardly room enough to turn yourself round, you just sit there with your feet dangling over the edge of the star, look at the Earth from the distance and eat a sandwich. You can't even put the sandwich on your lap — everything's in the state of weightlessness out there and the sandwich with its wrappers would fly away."

"Fancy that," Helen was amazed.

"Yes, and it actually does. Once on a tiny star my father was eating a cheese sandwich, and the sandwich became weightless, flew off and turned into a star. They say it's been named Seven Thousandth Sandwich Star. You may have seen it yourself."

"I probably have... " Helen tried to remember. "But what happened to the wrapping paper?"

"The wrapping paper? Well, at the last moment father managed to get hold of it and stuff it in his pocket. Littering is strictly forbidden in outer space."

Walking homewards, sunk deep in conversation, they suddenly found themselves by a sand-box in front of a two-storeyed house. Boys and girls on their bicycles were racing on the asphalt-paved area round the house.

"Now comes the final lap," called a girl with plaits, waving with her red dotted kerchief. "Hurrah! Liisi came first."

A small girl in a red jacket got off her bicycle smiling triumphantly. The second one at the finish was a boy with black hair, after him two smaller boys crossed the chalk line and only then did the smallest children on tricycles come in.

"It's easy for Liisi," grumbled the boy who had come in second. "With that racersson of hers anybody could win."

"Why are you always grumbling, Ardo?" asked the girl with plaits. "Hi, Helen," she said then, having noticed the girls. Irja held out her hand for the girl and introduced herself. The girl with plaits had a nice name — Marianna. The other children were called Sass, Kadri, Henrik, Eero and Kristel.

"Now we could play that ball game again, what do you say?" suggested Marianna. "With so many children here."

"You mean, so many girlssons, don't you," said Ardo scornfully.

"Are you a Swede?" asked Irja.

Ardo stared at her. "No, what's this nonsencesson all about?"

"But you speak such good Swedish," Irja praised him. "I know that all words in Swedish end in 'son'. My mother knows two Swedes, a Nilsson and an Anderson."

Ardo became a little confused. He was already in his second year at school and knew the Russian for hello, good bye, the cuckoo cuckoos, and I am a grandmother. One could not stand out among the other children in the yard by knowing that. But knowing Swedish came to him as a surprise.

"All right," he said, "let's have a game of balisson. I pick Henrik, Sass and Irja for my team."

"Please take Helen too," asked Irja. Ardo nodded in agreement, "All right. But she mustn't blubber when she gets hit by the ballsson. Liisi, come on, pick your team."

"What choice do I have? Except for Marianna the others are just a bunch of small kids... Kadri, Eero and Kristel," said Liisi, somewhat disappointed.

Ardo fetched a piece of chalk from somewhere and drew the lines of the court on the asphalt.

"How do you play this game?" Irja asked Helen in a whisper.

"Haven't you played it before?" Helen wondered. "The ball is thrown back and forth and the one who gets hit by it is considered dead and leaves the game."

"So simple."

Continued in Part 4...