"You may wear them to school to-day in honor of your birthday," said her mother; "but Birger's soldier suit seems a little out of season."
Birger had taken a fancy to have a suit of gray with black trimmings, such as the Swedish soldiers wear, and it had been given to him with a new Swedish flag, as a match for Gerda's furs.
Lieutenant Ekman turned his son around in order to see the fit of the trim jacket. "When you get the gun to go with it," he told the lad, "you will be a second Gustavus Adolphus."
"If I am to be as great a man as Gustavus Adolphus, I shall have to go to war," replied Birger; "and there seems to be little chance for a war now."
"There are many peaceful ways by which a man may serve his country,"
Lieutenant Ekman told his son; "but King Gustavus II had to fight to keep
Sweden from being swallowed up by the other nations."
"I could never understand how Sweden happened to have such a great fighter as Gustavus Adolphus," said Karen; but Gerda shook a finger at her.
"Sh!" she said, "that isn't the way to talk about your own country. And have you forgotten Gustav Vasa? He was the first of the Vasa line of kings; and he and Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII made the name of Vasa one of the most illustrious in Swedish history."
"Karen will never forget Gustav Vasa," said Birger, "after she has been to Dalarne and seen all the places where he was in hiding before he was a king."
"Yes," said Gerda, "there's the barn where he worked at threshing grain, and the house where the woman lowered him out of the window in the night, and the Stone of Mora, on the bank of the river, where he spoke to the men of Dalarne and urged them to fight for freedom."
"And there's the stone house in Mora over the cellar where Margit Larsson hid him when the Danish soldiers were close on his track," added Birger. "The inscription says:—