Anna and Selma still went about the farm by themselves. Anna averred that the next time the boys asked her to crochet a ball for them she’d say NO. Nor would she help them make taffy. And Selma, who was only seven, didn’t know what to do to get even with the boys; but she could at least refuse to let them haul gravel in her little cart.
Life up at the colony was so thrilling the boys all declared they had never had such good sport. They sat in councils and discussed the affairs of State; they voted to build roads and to construct a great stone bridge across the ditch, in order to connect the colony with the outer world. All the lads over twelve years of age were to do the road-breaking and stone-cutting, while the younger ones were to haul gravel. But afterward it seemed that Hugo Hammargren and Herman Milén would not help with the work, and from that arose many grave complications. Hugo and Herman, since they had no respect for law and order, were now looked upon as the black sheep of the colony. Even the jail had no terrors for them! So it was difficult to know just what course of procedure to follow in their case.
Anna and Selma down on the farm tried to amuse themselves by shooting with the boys’ bows-and-arrows and pitching their quoits. They said they had quite as much fun in winter, when the boys were away at school. Anna vowed that never again would she let any boy look at the big doll her aunt had given her for Christmas, which was over two feet tall, and wore shoes and stockings, corset and crinoline, and had a bed of its own, with sheets and pillowcases, and a trunk for its clothes, and everything.
Up at the colony things were flourishing. One fine day at a town meeting it was moved that a public house be opened. The motion was carried, and Master of the Mint Daniel Lagerlöf was elected keeper of the tavern, because he had the roomiest dwelling.
The new boniface must have found it rather tiring trying to satisfy the demands of his customers for home-brewed ginger beer, wild raspberries, green apples, and polypody. Of a sudden it struck him that he had a couple of sisters; and immediately he went over to the farm, where he found the girls down by the pond sailing the boys’ boats and promising each other never again to play with the boys or even so much as look at them.
“You may come up to the colony, girls, and be waitresses at my tavern.”
Anna and Selma let the boats sail whither they would. Not a word did they say about being forgotten and left to shift for themselves all this long time. They went right along with their brother to the boys’ colony, blissfully happy.
[VI
THE OLD SOLDIER]
IT WAS late afternoon of a beautiful day in autumn. Back-Kaisa, the onetime nursemaid at Mårbacka, who now worked at the loom, was tramping through the woods on her way to the hill-croft where she was born and grew up—on an errand for Lieutenant Lagerlöf. She and little Selma were still great friends, and she had taken the child along. They were in no hurry, these two; they stopped to pick and eat whortleberries growing by the roadside, they admired the gorgeous flybane and gathered their aprons full of lovely mosses to take home with them so as to have something pretty to lay between the inner and storm-windows of the nursery. Back-Kaisa was happy to be once more in the woods, where she knew every shrub and every stone. When they came to the wattled fence which surrounded the clearing where the croft-hut stood and were about to step over the stile, Back-Kaisa said: