gentlemen. Indeed she was not embarrassed by the presence of the company; her tongue wagged so rapidly and she was so facetiously persistent, he had to buy her eggs to get rid of her. Even after she had stuffed the money into the pocket of her kirtle, she would not go. Then she wanted to know who the other gentlemen were, and commented rather freely on their personal appearance. Finally, young Lieutenant Hedberg, who thought the joke had gone far enough, said:
"You'd better stop now, Hedda."
Whereupon the "old peasant woman" rushed up, and dealt him a sound box on the ear.
"Why, Adolph!" she cried, "how can you be so mean as to give me away like that!"
And indeed it was a shame, for her disguise was so perfect and her Värmland dialect so deliciously natural that none would have taken her for the charming lady from Stockholm.
That bit of drollery set the ball of talents rolling. Along in the evening Kristofer Wallroth sang a number of Eric Bögh's ditties. He had no voice to speak of, but his rendition of the serio-comic was side-splitting. At the end. Auditor Afzelius, with a silk kerchief bound round his head and a mantilla thrown over his shoulder, sang "Emilie's Heart-throbs." That was, of course, the star feature of the evening; the Auditor was inimitable in the role of the lovelorn maiden.
It must have been rather galling to the local pride of Sexton Melanoz that only these city folk provided en-
