[Illustration:  Now the lady held out her hand and said in a friendly tone, “Come here, dear child."...]

Now there came from out of a corner a quick noise of moving; Sally did not know what it was, for until now she had not dared to look around the room, but now she looked up.

A boy, a little taller than she, was carrying a small easy chair and placed it before Sally.  He looked at her with such a merry face as the restrained laughter came so visibly out of his eyes, that the sight brought a complete reversion in Sally’s feelings, and she, all at once, laughed right out; upon which, the boy too, relieved his feelings by a bright peal of laughter, for the rushing in and then the confusion of the unexpected guest had long since tempted him to laugh; but he was too well trained to dare to break out.

“Well, my child,” said the mother with that winning voice, “and what has brought you to me?”

“I have—­I ought to—­I wanted,” Sally began hesitatingly, “I wanted to give a message to Marianne—­” Sally could not stop at half the truth.  The sad, friendly eyes of the lady were penetratingly resting on hers, so everything had to come out as it was.

“That is lovely and friendly of you, that you want to see us, dear little girl.  How did you hear of us?” asked the lady, and took off Sally’s straw hat, while she put the question to the child.  She placed the hat on the table and smoothed her hair with a mother’s touch.

Now Sally related all in full confidence how it had happened, and that she and her two brothers had wanted to come yesterday to find out who was coming to live with Marianne, and to find out how the piano and all the other things could find room in the little house.  Sally now, for the first time, looked around the room and she had to wonder a little, for she saw only the piano and four bare walls, and then there were the two easy chairs on which she and the lady were sitting, and the small table.  She knew that besides this room there was a very small bedroom, where two beds could hardly find room.  Sally could not set herself to rights; all was so different from what she had imagined.  She had expected to see strange and foreign things standing about everywhere and now she saw nothing besides an old piano.  And yet the lady who sat before her in a black silken dress looked more aristocratic than Sally could ever have imagined; and the boy in his velvet suit looked quite like the old knights in Edi’s beautiful picture book, and he had brought her a seat without anyone telling him, and was more refined and courteous than she had ever before seen a boy.

When Sally turned her surprised eyes again to the lady, she saw such a painful expression in her face that it came involuntarily into her mind how the mother had said, that of course “she would not go there for the sake of staring at the people,” and she felt that she was doing something very much like it.  Sally rose.  All at once she remembered to whom she really wanted to go, so she said hastily:  “I must go to Kaetheli; she may be sick.”  With these words she quickly offered her hand to the lady.