“Selma and Gerda, you’ll have to go down and receive,” shouts the maid. “No one else is ready, and the first carriages are coming up the drive.”
Now the little girls have to hurry; but at the same time they are thrilled with joy. Just think! It’s beginning—the seventeenth of August is beginning!
They button up their frocks, pin on their kerchief rosettes, and run down. Not a grown person in sight! Not even their elder sister can help them receive, since she is attending a dress rehearsal of the evening’s play.
The first arrivals, Herr Nilsson, his wife and four children, are already seated on the veranda. They always come too early to parties, but never so much so as on the seventeenth of August. The little girls do not wonder at that; for everyone must long to come to Mårbacka on such a day.
The time seems a bit long, perhaps, to the guests and their little hostesses before the next vehicle rolls up and the homefolk put in an appearance. But to-day is the Seventeenth, and one does not catch at trifles.
The next arrivals are Pastor Alfred Unger and family from West Ämtervik. They come in a two-horse carriage and have driven about thirteen English miles. The wagon is full of women and children; the parson himself, who is a real horseman, is handling the reins. Lieutenant Lagerlöf, ready at last, comes out on the veranda as the pastor drives in on the grounds.
“Say, Alfred!” he shouts, “what the deuce have you done to your horses? They’re as like as two blackberries.”
“Chut, chut! You mustn’t betray any secrets on your birthday,” Pastor Unger shouts back.
As a matter of fact, the parson had two fine carriage horses which would have been exactly alike but for a white spot on the forehead of one of them. He had hit upon the idea of inserting between the blinder-straps of each a piece of white leather, to make it appear that the horses were perfectly matched. No one would have detected the artifice if the pastor had not been so proud of his device that he had talked of it to right and left, and of course the Lieutenant had heard all about it.
But besides this conveyance from West Ämtervik comes a hayrick packed full of young people, relatives from Karlstad. Then wagon after wagon draws up. Here come the Gårdsjö folk—most delightful of guests! They have a long line of vehicles. They are a large family, and besides themselves they have brought Oriel and Georgina Afzelius, and Kristofer Wallroth and his young sister, Julia, who are staying with them.