ime, before
grass and grain had sprouted.

The broad, beautiful Dal River that flows through the valley she
had managed to lay out effectively with a long and narrow piece of
glass, and the floating bridge connecting both sides of the parish,
had been making on the water this long while. The more distant
farms and settlements were marked off by pieces of red brick.
Farthest north, amid fields and meadows, lay the Ingmar Farm. To
the east was the village of Kolasen, at the foot of the mountain.
At the extreme south, where the river, with rapids and falls,
leaves the valley and rushes under the mountain, was Bergsana
Foundry.

The entire landscape was now ready, with country roads laid out
along the river, sanded and gravelled. Groves had also been set
out, here and there, on the plains and near the cottages. The
little girl had only to cast a glance at her structure of glass and
stone and earth and twigs to see before her the whole parish. And
she thought it all very beautiful.

Time after time she raised her head to call her mother and show her
what she had done, then changed her mind. She had always found it
wiser not to call attention to herself. But the most difficult work
of all was yet to come: the building up of the town on both sides
of the river. It meant much shifting about of stones and bits of
glass. The sheriff's house wanted to crowd out the merchant's shop;
there was no room for the judge's house next door to the doctor's.
There were the church and the parsonage, the drug-store and post-office,
the peasant homesteads, with their barns and outhouses, the inn,
the hunter's lodge, the telegraph station. To remember everything
was no small task!

Finally, the whole town of white and red houses stood embedded in
green. Now there was only one thing left: she had worked hard to
get everything else done so as to begin on the schoolhouse. She
wanted plenty of space for the school, which was to be built on the
riverside, and must have a big yard, with a flagpole right in the
middle of the lawn.

She had saved all her best blocks for the schoolhouse. Now she
wondered how she had best go about it. She wanted it to be just
like their school, with a big classroom on the ground floor and
another upstairs; then there was the kitchen and also the big room
where she and her parents lived. But all that would take a good
while. "They won't leave me in peace long enough," she said to
herself.

Just then footsteps we