"How do you like that song, Papa?"

"Well, that is such as Lower Wooders would make," said the father.

"And then," Edi continued, "we have made a song for an answer, that goes
thus:

"'And of Lower Wood the crowd
They always yell so loud
That they never, never stay within their den,
For all dispute and strife
They are much alive
For they use their fists when they ought to use their pen.'

"How do you like this one, Papa?"

"Just about the same. And who has sung about the Middle Lot?" asked the
father.

"The Lower Wooders and we together; they too had to have a song, but the
shortest, as it ought to be. It runs so:

"'And they of Middle Lot
They all together plot
That they are striving zealously for peace,
But with quarrelling they never cease.'

"And how do you like that, Papa?"

"They are, all three of them, kind of fighting songs, Edi," answered the
father, "and I should prefer that you keep busy with your history
studies, instead of taking sides in these party-fights. One never knows
where one comes out, and such poetry usually ends with lumps on the
heads."

Edi seemed much disappointed as he attacked his noodles with a visibly
spoiled appetite.

"And what has been your experience, Sally? Why are you so pensive?" the
father continued.

"Kaetheli was not at school," reported Sally, "and I had so much to talk
over with her. Perhaps she is sick; may I go to see her this afternoon?
We have no school, you know."

"Aha, Sally wants to see the strange boy," the sharp-witted Edi
remarked.

"You may go, Sally," the mother said, answering a questioning look from
the father. "But you will not go into any house where you have no
business, just to look at strangers. I know you are capable of doing
such things. You can start soon after dinner."

Sally was very happy. She quickly fetched her straw hat and took leave.
But outside she did not run straight through the passage-way as she
usually did in similar cases, but went to the kitchen door and peeped
in, and when she saw 'Lizebeth at the sink, where the latter was
scraping her pans, she went in very close to the old woman and said
somewhat mysteriously: "'Lizebeth, does Edi or Ritz perhaps have a torn
mattress on their bed?"

'Lizebeth stopped scraping and turned round. She looked at Sally from
head to foot, put her hands on her hips and said very slowly and
importantly: "May I ask what you mean by th