There stood the Bridge Farm cart, and there came the people from Hammersholm, right out at the extreme north of the island. Here were numbers of people from the shore farms at Dove Point and Rönne and Neksö—the whole island was there. But there was no time now to fall in with acquaintances. “We shall meet this afternoon!” was the general cry.
Karl Johan led the expedition; it was one of a head man’s duties to know the way about the Common. Fair Maria kept faithfully by his side, and every one could see how proud she was of him. Mons walked hand in hand with Lively Sara, and they went swinging along like a couple of happy children. Bengta and Anders had some difficulty in agreeing; they quarrelled every other minute, but they did not mean much by it. And Karna made herself agreeable.
They descended into a swamp, and went up again by a steep ascent where the great trees stood with their feet in one another’s necks. Pelle leaped about everywhere like a young kid. In under the firs there were anthills as big as haycocks, and the ants had broad trodden paths running like foothpaths between the trees, on and on endlessly; a multitude of hosts passed backward and forward upon those roads. Under some small fir-trees a hedgehog was busy attacking a wasps’ nest; it poked its nose into the nest, drew it quickly back, and sneezed. It looked wonderfully funny, but Pelle had to go on after the others. And soon he was far ahead of them, lying on his face in a ditch where he had smelt wild strawberries.
Lasse could not keep pace with the younger people up the hill, and it was not much better with Karna. “We’re getting old, we two,” she said, as they toiled up, panting.
“Oh, are we?” was Lasse’s answer. He felt quite young in spirit; it was only breath that he was short of.
“I expect you think very much as I do; when you’ve worked for others for so many years, you feel you want something of your own.”
“Yes, perhaps,” said Lasse evasively.
“One wouldn’t come to it quite empty-handed, either—if it should happen.”
“Oh, indeed!”
Karna continued in this way, but Lasse was always sparing with his words, until they arrived at the Rockingstone, where the others were standing waiting. That was a block and a half! Fifty tons it was said to weigh, and yet Mons and Anders could rock it by putting a stick under one end of it.