Therefore, it was awfully mean of Back-Kaisa to put all three chairs on top of the high birch-wood bureau, as she did sometimes, so that the children could not get at them. What if she had but just scrubbed the nursery and the little chairs would leave ugly marks on the wet floor if trailed across it? The former nursemaid never would have had the heart to take the chairs away from them. No, not even for a moment.
Fru Lagerlöf saw, to be sure, that the maid did not understand her little ones and that they were afraid of her. But Back-Kaisa had been hired for a year, and Fru Lagerlöf could not very well send her away before her time was up. She hoped, however, that things would be better in the summer, when the children could play out of doors, and have less to do with the nursemaid.
One forenoon in the early summer, it happened that the youngest child, a little girl, had been left alone, and asleep, in the nursery. On awaking she sat up in bed, half-dazed, and wondered where everyone had gone; at the same time she felt singularly drowsy and uncomfortable. She remembered, as she came to herself somewhat, that earlier in the day she and the other children had been to Ås Springs with their father to bathe. On their return Back-Kaisa had put all three of them to bed—dressed as they were—that they might nap a while before dinner. But the beds on which Johan and Anna had lain now stood empty; so the little girl knew, of course, that they were already up and gone.
They were perhaps out in the garden playing? She felt a bit hurt at their running off like that, leaving her all by herself in the nursery. She had better crawl out of bed, she thought, and hurry down to them.
The little girl was then three and a half years old, and she could easily open the door and walk down the stairs. But to cross the dangerous attic alone ... She listened—perhaps someone was coming to fetch her.... No, there were no footsteps on the stair; she would have to venture by herself.
But now that she wanted to rise from her bed she could not. She tried again and again, only to sink back. Her legs did not seem to belong to her; she had lost all control of them.
The child was terror-stricken. The feeling of utter helplessness which came over her when the body refused to obey was something so dreadful she remembered it long, long afterwards—aye, all her life.
Naturally, she began to cry. She was in great trouble, and there was no grown person at hand to help or comfort her. But she had not been alone such a very long while when the door opened and Back-Kaisa appeared.
“Isn’t Selma coming down to dinner? The big folk——” Back-Kaisa stopped short.
The little girl never thought about its being the cross nursemaid who stood in the doorway. In her desperate plight she only saw a grown person who could help her—and put out her arms to her.