a little knot--_pug_ is, I think, the classic name for that
coiffure--and her dress cut as low in the throat and adorned with
precisely such a self-embroidered collar as the lady rejoiced in who
occupied the seat before me at the theatre. That she was one of the
fashionables of Carlstad could be seen in the lofty pose of that pug,
and in the curious structure of ribbon and lace that sat astride of
it and hung down at each side. Her husband, a small, rather dried-up
gentleman, had the look of a town oracle who was oppressed at home,
and her daughter was one of the prettiest girls in the house. The
overgrown boy, the son and heir, was not pretty: he sat beside his
sister and kept nudging her. I could not exactly understand what he
said in Swedish, but I know it must have been of this nature: "There's
Jim Davis over there. Look, sister, look!"

Sister only glanced at him with a reproving air of "Don't push me so,"
and then gazed steadfastly in the other direction; but she was not
left long in peace. Tom's elbow began again in a minute: "He's looking
right at you, all the time. You'd better turn round and bow to him."
And the color would creep up in her cheeks, do all she could to
prevent it, so that she had to lean across mamma and say something to
her father, just so as not to bow to Mr. Davis, which would have been
such a simple thing to do, after all.

Everybody who came in nodded and spoke to everybody else, and then
shook hands across the seats; and we felt quite out of our element
under the inquiring but superior glances that fell to our lot. It was
all very well for us to make our little observations and smile at
each other on the sly: we had the consciousness all the while of not
belonging to the first society in Carlstad, and of being viewed as
intruders in that select circle.

We had been studying one family party after another as the seats
filled around us, for the audience collected by families, when, with a
little rustle and stir attending her progress, and a whispering behind
her as she advanced, the Bride appeared, for she had arrived from
Stockholm by our train. It was the first time any one had seen her
since she started on the wedding-tour, and the bows and smiles she
dealt out on every side were not to be numbered. Our pretty girl got
one--they were school-friends--and the horrid boy another, which he
barely answered with a solemn nod of his head, being as shy of her,
apparently, in her blue silk and