“I thought it almost uncanny when the child began to cry,” said one of the sisters Tobiaeson. “I knew then that something would happen.” “Now what does Lieutenant Lagerlöf think about it?” queried the other sister. “What do I think? Well,” he replied, “I say it couldn’t have turned out differently when we sent a school-priest like him ashore. He was no man for Tita Gray.” “Do you mean, Lieutenant, that if we had sent another--yourself perhaps--we would have had a better reception?” “Gad, yes!” exploded the Lieutenant. Lord, how they laughed! The pall of gloom lifted in a twinkling, as they pictured the meeting between Lieutenant Lagerlöf and Tita Gray. Aye, aye, he knew right enough that he could have managed her. Lord, how they laughed! VII THE BIRD OF PARADISE THEY had taken for the summer a cosy little cottage at the end of Karlagatan, where they were so happy and content that Lieutenant Lagerlöf and the children named the place Little Mårbacka, which was assuredly the highest title of distinction they could bestow on a house in a strange city. The little house fronted a bit of a garden enclosed by a picket-fence, and under the spreading trees they had their breakfasts and suppers. At the back of the house were a couple of potato patches, beyond which, over against a high cliff, stood a tiny hut not much larger than the cabin on the _Uddeholm._ In that hut lived their hostess, Fru Strömberg, who was the wife of a sea captain. During the winter months she occupied the cottage herself, but summers she always let it to visitors. She now sat in her tiny cabin from morn till night, surrounded by blooming oleanders and tables and shelves laden with curios her husband had brought from foreign parts. When Fru Lagerlöf and Mamselle Lovisa were having coffee with their friends and the Lieutenant had gone mackerel-fishing, and when Anna had gone over to the candy man’s daughters’ and Johan to his crabs, Back-Kaisa and Selma would repair to Fru Strömberg’s cabin. Fru Strömberg was their special friend, and to sit with her under the oleanders was as restful as sitting with Grandmother on the corner sofa at Mårbacka. She could not tell stories, but she had many wonderful things to show them: big sea-shells that were full of sound and murmured when you put them to your ear; porcelain men from China with long pig-tails and long moustaches; and she had besides two very big shells, one a cocoanut, the other an ostrich egg. Back-Kaisa and Fru Strömberg talked mostly of serious and religious things, which the child did not understand; but sometimes they touched on lighter subjects.