“No one else has remembered his birthday,” she said, as they entered the silent graveyard. “See, the snow is quite untrodden. Sigrid when are they going to put father’s name on the stone?” and she pointed to the slanting marble slab which leaned against the small cross. “There is only mother’s name still. Wont they put a bigger slab instead where there will be room for both?” “Not now,” said Sigrid, her voice trembling. “But why not, Sigrid? Every one else has names put. It seems as if we had forgotten him.” “Oh, no, no,” said Sigrid, with a sob. “It isn’t that, darling; it is that we remember so well, and know what he would have wished about it.” “I don’t understand,” said the child wistfully. “It is in this way,” said Sigrid, taking her hand tenderly. “I can not have money spent on the tombstone, because he would not have liked it. Oh, Swanhild!—you must know it some day, you shall hear it now—it was not only his own money that was lost, it was the money of other people. And till it is paid back how can I alter this?” Swanhild’s eyes grew large and bright. “It was that, then, that made him die,” she faltered. “He would be so sorry for the other people. Oh, Sigrid, I will be so good: I don’t think I shall ever be naughty again. Why didn’t you tell me before, and then I shouldn’t have been cross because you wouldn’t buy me things?” “I wanted to shield you and keep you from knowing,” said Sigrid. “But after all, it is better that you should hear it from me than from some outsider.” “You will treat me like a baby, Sigrid, and I’m ten years old after all—quite old enough to be told things.... And oh, you’ll let me help to earn money and pay back the people, wont you?” “That is what Frithiof is trying to do,” said Sigrid, “but it is so difficult and so slow. And I can’t think of anything we can do to help.” “Poor dear old Frithiof,” said Swanhild. And she gazed over the frozen lake to the snow mountains which bounded the view, as if she would like to see right through them into the big London shop where, behind a counter, there stood a fair-haired Norseman toiling bravely to pay off those debts of which she had just heard. “Why, on father’s last two birthdays Frithiof was away in Germany, but then we were looking forward so to having him home again. There’s nothing to look forward to now.”