The gentlemen offer an arm to the ladies and, led by the band, the couples march through the garden down to the little park.
There they gather round a table on which stand glasses of punch and claret-cup. Obviously, the moment has come for the birthday speech and the toast to Lieutenant Lagerlöf. Engineer Noreen, Senator Nils Andersson, and Herr Nilsson of Visteberg have all come prepared to speak. Each wonderingly looks at the others, and hesitates, not wanting to push forward and take the word from his rivals.
"Well, are we to have something?" the Lieutenant asks. These high-flown set speeches are not to his taste, and he is anxious to have that part of the programme over as quickly as possible. Just then from behind him comes a clear voice, with musical Stockholm intonations, and out of the thicket steps a beautiful Zingara. She asks if she may tell his fortune. Taking his left hand between her two pretty hands, she reads the lines of his palm.
Lieutenant Lagerlöf had been very ill during the winter, and to regain his health had spent part of the summer at Strömstad. All his exploits and divertissements on that sojourn the Zingara now reads in his hand, and, moreover, she reveals them in lilting verse.
It is a bit pert and naughty, to be sure, but it provokes laughter and the Lieutenant is charmed.
"Anyhow, you're Number One, Hedda!" he says.
But when Fru Hedda has proposed a health to the
