“Can’t we do that here? Oh, do say we may! I do so want to decorate a Christmas tree.”
Dorothy stopped, quite out of breath, and Professor Edgecombe looked at their mother, questioningly.
“I think it is a splendid plan,” she said, “much better than any I could have suggested.”
So Professor Edgecombe explained to Stena that she was to write and explain matters to her aunt and tell her that he would send a sleigh to bring the family to a Jul-tide party on New Year’s day, when they would tell them all about Freda.
Stena’s face was wreathed with smiles and the eyes of the little chimney-sweep fairly stuck out of his head, as he bowed his thanks for the bright new coin which Professor Edgecombe gave him to pay for his work.
And now the days were busy ones indeed. On the twentieth of December, the old market-place in Upsala was an interesting
place, for there the peasants from the country were erecting little booths, each roofed over with cotton drilling and lighted with lamps and lanterns. Here were sold many trinkets which the peasants had made in anticipation of the holiday season.
Fru Bjerkander invited the Edgecombes to accompany her, when she took her own children to visit the market. She explained that this special market was a very ancient one and that the peasants, according to an old custom, were permitted annually to sell their wares in this way from the twentieth of December, until the end of the month.