“But I said, ‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,’” says Marie.  “That is all the English I could talk, and I would say, ‘I won’t.’  Then my cousin told me I must leave; I could not stay in her house.  And I felt dreadful bad.  The young folks come in with provisions to see me:  they made a party because I was going away.  And I notice that all kept being called into the next room but me.  I was weak yet, and it made me feel as if they wanted to slight me.  But last of all they called me into the next room, and there was twenty-five dollar they had made up to give me.  And I cried; I could not talk and thank them, but just cried hard as I could cry.  Then I took that money and paid part of my debt, and got a good place to work.”

Marie is strong, willing, humble, and touchingly friendly in the position of the Western “girl.”  She is ambitious to learn American ways.  She makes the most delicious pancakes that ever fluffed upon a griddle or united with butter and maple syrup.  She is religious, she is tender with children, she is full of love for her native land.  Her lovers are not encouraged.

“I go back to Sveden to visit it once more in five years.  I go back before I marry any man, now my debt is all paid.”

This Svenska maid is full of folk-stories.  She tells the children how St. John’s eve is celebrated in Sweden.  The young men and girls bring boughs and construct arbors.  They stay up all night, eating, playing, and visiting from arbor to arbor.  About midsummer, it is true, there is very little night in Northern Sweden.

“This was once in the papers,” says Marie innocently.  “They said it was true.  There was a girl going to take her first communion, and she got into the churchyard before she missed her braid.  Then she turned round and started home after her braid, and met a man with a covered basket on his arm.  He asked her what she was going for, and she told him she was going home for what she forgot, and the man said, ’Look in the basket, and see if that is your switch.’  She looked, and there was the hair coiled up.  Then he asked her if he might put it on her head, and the girl said yes, and he put it on, and she went to church.

“It came to the place where the minister gives her the bread, and her braid slipped down on one shoulder; but when he gave her the wine it jump like it going to strike the cup, for it was a snake the man put on her, and it was fast to her head and never came off again.”

Marie’s mother in youth worked for a Swedish farmer, and it was her duty to get up about three o’clock in the morning and light a fire under the boiler where the cows’ feed was heated.  This was in the barn.  The cows stood upon a floor over a large pit wherein were caught all the liquids of the stable.  The sleepy maid took a coal upon a chip, instead of matches, and this primitive custom saved her from horribly drowning.  For as she opened the cows’ stable one morning, and was taking a step within, the chip flared up, and showed her three cows swimming below in the pit.  The floor had given way.