“Well, that is such as Lower Wooders would make,” said the father.

“And then,” Edi continued, “we have made a song for an answer, that goes thus: 

    “’And of Lower Wood the crowd
     They always yell so loud
     That they never, never stay within their den,
     For all dispute and strife
     They are much alive
     For they use their fists when they ought to use their pen.’

“How do you like this one, Papa?”

“Just about the same.  And who has sung about the Middle Lot?” asked the father.

“The Lower Wooders and we together; they too had to have a song, but the shortest, as it ought to be.  It runs so: 

    “’And they of Middle Lot
     They all together plot
     That they are striving zealously for peace,
     But with quarrelling they never cease.’

“And how do you like that, Papa?”

“They are, all three of them, kind of fighting songs, Edi,” answered the father, “and I should prefer that you keep busy with your history studies, instead of taking sides in these party-fights.  One never knows where one comes out, and such poetry usually ends with lumps on the heads.”

Edi seemed much disappointed as he attacked his noodles with a visibly spoiled appetite.

“And what has been your experience, Sally?  Why are you so pensive?” the father continued.

“Kaetheli was not at school,” reported Sally, “and I had so much to talk over with her.  Perhaps she is sick; may I go to see her this afternoon?  We have no school, you know.”

“Aha, Sally wants to see the strange boy,” the sharp-witted Edi remarked.

“You may go, Sally,” the mother said, answering a questioning look from the father.  “But you will not go into any house where you have no business, just to look at strangers.  I know you are capable of doing such things.  You can start soon after dinner.”

Sally was very happy.  She quickly fetched her straw hat and took leave.  But outside she did not run straight through the passage-way as she usually did in similar cases, but went to the kitchen door and peeped in, and when she saw ’Lizebeth at the sink, where the latter was scraping her pans, she went in very close to the old woman and said somewhat mysteriously:  “’Lizebeth, does Edi or Ritz perhaps have a torn mattress on their bed?”

’Lizebeth stopped scraping and turned round.  She looked at Sally from head to foot, put her hands on her hips and said very slowly and importantly:  “May I ask what you mean by that question, Sally?  Do you think this household is so carried on that one lies about on ragged mattresses and sleeps, until a little one, who is far from old enough to turn a mattress, thinks of coming to ask ’does not this one or that one have a ragged mattress’ on his bed?  Yes, Sally, what cobwebs you do have in your head.”

“I do not care about the mattress, it is on account of Marianne that I ask,” Sally explained.  “Do you know, she now has some new people in her house and I should so much like to see them, and therefore I wanted so much to know whether you could not sacrifice a mattress so that Marianne could pull the horsehair for a mattress, for Mother will not let me go into the house without a good excuse.”