The next morning was crisp and frosty, but the sun, rising in a strange slanting ring, tempered the September chill almost to mildness. Indeed the sun behaves very oddly in Finland; it was then circling round the sky in its autumn course, never setting, as in our country, but staying up a little way all night, and all the while weaving its spiral rings lower and lower down the sky. By and by it would hide altogether and not show itself for many weeks. So while the light lasted every one was making the most of it.
Elsa was astir early; breakfast had long been over; she had swept the house with the broom of birch twigs, and was now outside the cottage helping her mother churn.
As she pushed the wooden dasher up and down, the wind blew the color into her cheeks and her hair about her face. She wore a close little woolen hood, a homespun dress and a long apron embroidered in bright colors, and on her feet were wooden shoes.
All at once Elsa’s quick ears caught the sound of wheels.
“See, mother!” she exclaimed, “there is Jan of the Ohlsen farm; but who, thinkest thou, is the stranger beside him?”
Fru Sveaborg shaded her eyes with her hand, and sure enough, saw, jogging up the road, a pony dragging one of the odd two-wheeled carts of Finland. As she looked, it turned into the narrow lane of birch trees leading to the cottage.
Jan drew rein.
“Good morrow, neighbor Sveaborg!” he called out.
Then as the Fru left her churn and came toward them, he said: