Something very particular must be in preparation, for after school all the scholars were standing again in a dense circle, beating their hands in the air and shouting as loud as they could, to have their views heard.  Sally, who had waited a few moments for her brothers, went on home for she knew how long such meetings were apt to last and that her brothers would only arrive home when the soup was being served.  Sally stepped into the house and with her school-bag in her hand she went straight to the kitchen.

“Now I will tell you everything that happened yesterday, ’Lizebeth,” she said.

’Lizebeth nodded encouragingly and Sally began, and became more and more excited the longer she talked.  She was most excited when she came to telling about the lady and her little boy, describing the way she talked, how she and the boy were dressed, and her aristocratic way.  But all at once ’Lizebeth jumped as if a wasp had stung her and she called out, “What do you say, Sally?  This woman wears a silk dress in the middle of the week?  Silk?  And she lives at Marianne’s?  And the boy wears velvet pants and a jacket all of velvet?  Well, well!  I have lived ten years with your great-grandfather and thirty with your grandfather and twelve with your father, and I have seen your father grow up from the first day of his life and your little brothers.  And I have known them since they were babies and none of them ever had velvet pants on their body, and yet they were all ministers, your great-grandfather, your grandfather, your father, and the little ones will be ministers too, and none of them ever had even a piece of velvet on them and this woman in the middle of the week walks about in silk, yes indeed!  And then taking rooms at Marianne’s and living where the basket mender has lived, I tell you, Sally, there is something behind that!  But it has to come out, and if Marianne wants to help a hundred times to cover it up, I tell you, Sally, I will bring out what is behind it all.  Yes, indeed, velvet pants?  I wonder what we shall hear next!”

Sally stood quite astounded before the anger-spouting ’Lizebeth, and could not understand the cause of this outbreak.  But she had enough of it, so she turned round and hastened into the sitting-room, where, according to her expectations, at the very last moment, just when ’Lizebeth came into the room with the soup tureen, the brothers appeared, in a peculiar way.  At each side of ’Lizebeth one crawled into the room, then shot straight across the room, like the birds before a storm shoot through the air so that one fears they will run their heads against something.  Fortunately the two boys did not run their heads against anything, but each landed quite safely on his chair, and at once ’Lizebeth placed the soup on the table; but so decidedly and with such an angry face, as if she wanted to say:  “There!  If you had to put up with what I have to, then you would not trouble about your soup.”