Now the end of school was announced.  In a short time the door was opened, and the boys and girls hastened out toward the open place before the schoolhouse, where suddenly all were crowded together like a huge ball, from the midst of which came a tremendous noise and confused shoutings.  Something out of the common must have happened.

“In the house of old Marianne”—­“a tremendously rich lady”—­“a piano, four men could not get it in, the door is too narrow”—­“a small boy”—­“before we went to school”—­It was so confused, nothing could really be understood.  Then a voice shouted:  “All come along!  Perhaps they are not through with it, come, all of you to the Middle Lot!” And suddenly the whole ball separated, and almost the whole crowd ran in the same direction.

Only two boys remained on the playground and looked at each other, quite perplexed.  The one was stout little Ritz, who long since had forgotten his great trouble and had listened intently to the exciting, although incomprehensible story.  The other was his brother Edi, a slender, tall fellow with a high forehead and serious grey eyes beneath.  He was hardly two years older than his brother; but for his not quite nine years, he was tall, and appeared much older than the seven-year-old Ritz.

“We must run home quickly and ask whether we too may go; we must see that, Ritz, so hurry up!” With these words Edi pulled his brother along, and soon they turned round the corner and also disappeared.

Behind the schoolhouse, near the hawthorn hedge, stood the last of the crowd in animated conversation.  It was Sally, the ten-year-old sister of the two boys, with her friend Kaetheli, who with great excitement seemed to describe an occurrence.

“But Kaetheli, I do not know the beginning,” said Sally.  “Just you begin at the beginning, from where you saw everything with your own eyes, will you?”

“Very well, I will, but this time you must pay close attention,” said Kaetheli.  “You know that the old blind straw-plaiter lived with the little girl Meili at old Marianne’s?  Well, Meili went to school at Lower Wood.  Two weeks ago her father died and Meili had to go to Lower Wood to her uncle.  Then Marianne cleaned the bedroom and the sitting-room terribly clean, opened all the windows, and afterwards closed them all again and put on the shutters.  She herself lives in the little room above.  But this morning everything was open, and yet Marianne had said nothing about it to anyone and all people in Middle Lot were surprised at that.  At half-past eleven, just when we were coming out of school, we saw a wagon coming up the hill from Lower Wood, and the horse could hardly pull the load, for there was a large piano on the wagon, a bed, and lots of other things, a table and a little box, and I think that was all.  Now the wagon stopped at old Marianne’s cottage, and all at once there came out of the cottage old Marianne and a woman, who was quite white in the face, and behind