"There once was little Karin,
Who at the royal hall
Among the handmaids serving
The fairest was of all.
"Then spoke the King, 'Fair Karin,
Wilt thou my sweetheart be?
My horse and golden saddle
I'll straightway give to thee.'"
The children all laughed merrily at the new turn to the familiar old song.
"How pretty we shall make the May-pole!" exclaimed Sigrid.
She called it a "May-pole," though it was the middle of June. The Swedish word for "May" means green leaf. And a "green-leaf pole" it certainly was when they had draped the cross-bars with leaves and garlands and added scores of the yellow and blue flags of Sweden.
Toward the close of the afternoon, the pole in its gala-dress was swung into place by means of huge ropes. Then a great shout went up from the little crowd of relatives and working people who lived on the grounds.
"Strike up a dance, Per," cried Major Lund to the fiddler. In a twinkling, the children had caught hold of hands and were dancing around the pole. Old and young, servants and all, shared in the merrymaking.
"IN A TWINKLING, THE CHILDREN . . . WERE DANCING AROUND THE POLE"
As Sigrid ran about in a gay costume, you would scarcely have recognized her. Instead of her plain city clothes, she wore a pretty peasant dress. Many fashionable Swedish mammas let their children wear this dress on holidays in the country. Over her dark blue woolen skirt, Sigrid wore a bright apron, striped in red, blue, yellow, black, and white. The waist was white, with a red silk bodice and shoulder-straps. An embroidered kerchief was folded quaintly about her throat. On her yellow braids rested a tall pointed blue cap, with red pipings and tassels in back. Several other little girls at the dance wore similar dresses.
"Erik," said Sigrid, quite late in the evening, as the fiddler stopped to tune up for the next dance, "several times to-night I have seen some one over by the well-sweep. I thought perhaps he was one of the farmers' children. But he hides there as though he was afraid to come out."