at question, Sally? Do you
think this household is so carried on that one lies about on ragged
mattresses and sleeps, until a little one, who is far from old enough to
turn a mattress, thinks of coming to ask 'does not this one or that one
have a ragged mattress' on his bed? Yes, Sally, what cobwebs you do have
in your head."

"I do not care about the mattress, it is on account of Marianne that I
ask," Sally explained. "Do you know, she now has some new people in her
house and I should so much like to see them, and therefore I wanted so
much to know whether you could not sacrifice a mattress so that Marianne
could pull the horsehair for a mattress, for Mother will not let me go
into the house without a good excuse."

"Oh, so! that is different," said 'Lizebeth quite mildly, for she had
also been wondering what kind of people her old friend had taken into
her home, and now, perhaps, she could learn something about them through
Sally.

"I can help you, Sally," she said. "You go to Marianne and tell her that
I send my greetings, and I have long since intended to come and see her,
but the likes of us cannot get away when we want to; we never know what
may happen if we are out of the house for five minutes; but tell her
that I will surely come some fine Sunday. Now then go, and give my
message."

Sally ran with a joyous heart, first through the garden, then away over
the meadow and down the hill as far as the fir wood, where the dry road
lay for a long stretch in the shade. Here Sally slackened her pace a
little. It was so beautiful to walk along in shade of the trees, where
above in their tops the wind rustled so delightfully and all the birds
sang in confusion. She also had to consider how she would arrange her
calls, whether she would go first to Kaetheli or to Marianne; but this
time old Marianne had a stronger attraction than Kaetheli and Sally felt
that she must go there first and give her message. Now her thoughts fell
on the strange people and she had to imagine how they looked and what
she was going to say, and what they would say when she knocked and asked
for Marianne. Thus she thought everything well out, for Sally had a
great power of imagining things.

In this way she came to the first houses of Middle Lot. She turned away
from the road and went toward Marianne's house, which stood a little way
from the road and lay almost hidden behind a hedge. As Sally had been
accustomed to do, she now ran right into t