Peter looked very surprised when the woman with the bundle came to the door of the office:
“Upon my word, it’s ... isn’t it Frida?”
She answered with fluent tongue:
“Yes sir, it’s Frida right enough. I have the new laundry at Majängen now—Frida Öberg, Laundress—No. 5, Solbacken. Here is the bill. Excuse my bringing the laundry at this hour, but I had promised it on Saturday. There is no change here at Selambshof, I see.”
Peter stood with the bill in his hand, staring at the laundress, who had begun to pick collars, cuffs and starched shirts out of her bundle. How strange that it was Frida he was staring at, Frida of Brundin’s bedroom. That white and soft creature he had one night caught a glimpse of from behind the blind in the bailiff’s wing. This then was the Frida of his timid, oppressive, light-shy boyish dreams. There she stood, well preserved, smiling, insinuatingly plump, equipped with such charms that not even the simplest country yokel could help noticing them. Suddenly she was enveloped by a warmth as from hot irons, thought Peter. And far away at Kolsnäs they heard the accordion again tuning up a dance. Then he felt a sudden furious desire for movement, to make a noise and jump about with somebody in his arms. And he seized one of the shirts and waved it about:
“I hope you have washed the wedding shirt well?” he cried out almost menacingly.
“Why, are you going to get married, too?”
“Yes, this very moment, if necessary. Don’t you hear the wedding music? Shan’t we take a turn, we two?”
With the shirt spread out before him he jumped about in a sort of grotesque dance, threw his great arms round Frida and began to jump about whilst the wedding shirt still flapped about them. The worn floor-boards groaned under Peter’s weight, the dust rose high and the flies buzzed away frightened from the paper ball below the lamp in the ceiling.
Frida defended herself laughingly when Peter wanted to kiss her: