a, gathering up her treasures, "here's the end of
our long journey over the wonderful canal!"

But Erik looked down the river to the tall chimneys of the iron-works and
said to himself, "And here's the beginning of my work in the world."

CHAPTER XII

A WINTER CARNIVAL

"Abroad is good but home is better," quoted Birger, as the railroad train
whizzed across the country, bearing the twins toward home once more after
four happy days of sight-seeing in Goeteborg.

"Vacation will soon be over and we shall be back again in our dear old
school," exclaimed Gerda, with a comical expression on her face.

"I feel as if we had been going to the best kind of a school all summer,"
said her brother, looking out of the window at the broad fields and
little red farmhouses cuddling down in the green landscape. "We have been
learning about the largest cities, and the canals and railroads, the
lakes and rivers, and that is what we have to do when we study geography
in school."

"If I ever make a geography," and Gerda gave a great sigh, "I shall have
nothing but pictures in it. That is the way the real earth looks outside
of the geographies. There are just millions and millions of pictures
fitted together, and not a single word said about them."

Birger laughed. "I will study your geography," he said, "if I am not too
busy making one of my own."

"What kind of a geography shall you make?" asked Gerda.

"I shall put in my book all my thoughts about the sights I see," he
answered. "It will read like this, 'The harbor at Goeteborg made me think
of Stockholm harbor, with all the different ships that sail away to
foreign lands; and of the great world beyond the sea.'"

"Your geography would never please the children half so much as mine,"
said Gerda; "because we don't all think alike. It makes some people
sea-sick when they think of ships."

"Here we are in Stockholm," said Lieutenant Ekman, gathering up the bags
and bundles and helping the children out of the train. "Before we write a
geography we must see about putting little Karen Klasson under the
doctor's care."

But they found that Fru Ekman had already taken Karen to see the doctor,
and had made arrangements for her treatment at the Gymnastic Institute.

"The doctor says that I shall be able to walk without a crutch by
springtime, if I take the gymnastics faithfully every day," said Karen
happily.

"Oh, Gerda," she added, "ever so many of your friends have been