“She wants to know where Arne Sandstrom is. Right over there—that big house, which you see lighted up. She doesn’t understand. Arne Sandstrom over there. Getting married! Yes, yes. Arne Sandstrom. Here, Jack, you trot out a little Swedish, can’t you? You’ve been among them more than I have.”
“Arne Sandstrom derover,” exclaimed the other, pointing to Peter Lund’s house, with a fine assumption of handling the language well. “Arne Sandstrom jifta to-night, you know.”
“Yifta!” said Elsa, shrinking down in stature.
“She’s got hold of it. That’s all right. You’ll be in time for the wedding.”
“She didn’t understand; she thought we were making fun of her,” said one of the lads as they sauntered on.
“She did understand, and there she goes straight across the street. Brush up in the languages, young man, and make yourself as useful to the public as I am.”
When Elsa had entered the Lund premises, however, she did not ring the bell, but wavered around the house, looking up at lighted windows, and shifting her little bundle from one arm to the other. She had other baggage at the station, but it seemed no longer worth while. There was a western veranda, on the lowest step of which she sat down in quiet stupor to collect herself for some determined movement.
Anguish and disappointment must be the natural lot in this world, only she had not lived enough years to find it out before. Though summer darkness had come, the after-glow was still so bright in the west that it half quarreled with abundant lamplight. Elsa could hear the front gate, the crunch of coming footsteps, and frequent peals of the door-bell, as she sat drawn together, and the eternal minutes traveled on.
Peter Lund’s house was full of joyful stir. China and silver tinkled in the open dining-room, where several women were putting last touches to the tables. Girls flew up and down the back stairway, calling to one another in Swedish.
“One thing is sure, Yennie Yonsen,” called a voice in the home tongue, “there will not be enough married women to take the bride from us girls in the wedding dance; so now what will Arne Sandstrom do?”