"May I take out a cup to Petter?" asked Nils, while he cut the big cake into generous pieces, and offered the simple entertainment to the teacher. Of course the driver did not refuse the proposed refreshment, nor did Nils hesitate to help himself, while the mistress was taking her coffee and glancing round the premises.
All was fresh and clean about her. The windows had evidently been open since early morning, and the closets and shelves could well afford to be displayed through the doors more than half ajar.
"Thanks, Nils," said the mistress, as she took the boy's hand after the refreshment.
"Thanks and welcome to the new teacher!" was the reply.
"Now I shall go in and look at the schoolroom while Petter and you furnish my room for me. The sofa should stand there, and the bureau there. The rest I can leave to you," said Tora, as she disappeared.
Nils unfolded a strip of rag carpeting and "criss-crossed" it round the room, whispering to himself, "Mother said there were to be no footmarks left behind us."
The schoolroom was but a big, bare room—no maps on the walls, none of the modern aids for instruction, save that the space between the two windows that looked out towards the meadow had been painted, to be used as a blackboard: "a useless, new-fangled notion" the rustics had called this forward step in the way of education.
In front of the blackboard stood a wooden armchair for the teacher. The benches were low, and the desks were of the simplest sort, saving one, which was larger and higher, which the teacher at once understood was the permanent arrangement for Nils. Her heart went out towards the big, kind fellow, on whom so sore a trial had been laid in his youth.
Along one side of the schoolroom there were four horses standing silent, but not "saddled and bridled," as in old nursery stories. Without head or tail, they stood on four sprawling legs—supports for two long, "shallow boxes" that had been in the schoolroom for fifty years or more. Wood was abundant in the old days, and unskilful hands had done the work; so the boxes were but clumsy specimens of carpentry, and deep enough, it seemed, to hold sand for all the long winter through. The grandfathers of the neighbourhood could remember when these receptacles were their writing-desks, in which, stick in hand, they were taught to trace in the smoothed sand their names or any higher efforts of chirography that the teacher might demand. These superannuated articles of furniture were now used in winter as places of deposit for the children's folded outer garments, rather than the cold vestibule. There, too, the dinner-baskets had their rightful quarters.
The room was high, as it went up to the very roof. On the rafters were stored, in cold weather, the stilts for summer, and the bundles of ropes for the swings to be fastened to the tall trees by adventurous Nils, whose friendly hands delighted to send the laughing little ones flying far up into the fresh air like merry fairies. There, too, were the bows and arrows, and all other lawful things for summer sport.