rosettes, and run down. Not a grown person in sight! Not even their elder sister can help them receive, since she is attending a dress rehearsal of the evening's play.
The first arrivals, Herr Nilsson, his wife and four children, are already seated on the veranda. They always come too early to parties, but never so much so as on the seventeenth of August. The little girls do not wonder at that; for everyone must long to come to Mårbacka on such a day.
The time seems a bit long, perhaps, to the guests and their little hostesses before the next vehicle rolls up and the homefolk put in an appearance. But to-day is the Seventeenth, and one does not catch at trifles.
The next arrivals are Pastor Alfred Unger and family from West Ämtervik. They come in a two-horse carriage and have driven about thirteen English miles. The wagon is full of women and children; the parson himself, who is a real horseman, is handling the reins. Lieutenant Lagerlöf, ready at last, comes out on the veranda as the pastor drives in on the grounds.
"Say, Alfred!" he shouts, "what the deuce have you done to your horses? They're as like as two blackberries."
"Chut, chut! You mustn't betray any secrets on your birthday," Pastor Unger shouts back.
As a matter of fact, the parson had two fine carriage horses which would have been exactly alike but for a white spot on the forehead of one of them. He had hit upon the idea of inserting between the blinder-straps
