The _jungfru_, who had come that day for a visit, was having coffee with the family. She had placed her chair in the middle of the room, where all might see and talk with her. They had run the whole gamut of harmless topics, and were now at a standstill. Lieutenant Lagerlöf, who could not abide a lull in the conversation, began to question her about missions, colporteurs, sewing-circles, and prayer-meetings. Knowing the sort he was and what she was, it was clear that this could not run smoothly. Fru Lagerlöf tried to change the conversation, Mamselle Lovisa gave her brother a nudge with her elbow, and Herr Tyberg called attention to the excellent quality of the coffee. But the Lieutenant and the _jungfru_ went right on with their discussion, which was getting a bit hot. Now Fru Lagerlöf knew from of old that if the _jungfru_ took offence at anything the Lieutenant said about the “miss-i-on,” she would not come again for at least a year; and her circumstances were such that she needed to come to Mårbacka occasionally, to get a few good meals, a sack of flour, and something tasty to take home with her. She saw no way out of it but to ask the _jungfru_ what had become of all the dean’s twenty children. In a twinkling the foreign and home missions, the heathen children, and even the impious Lieutenant were forgotten. She brightened, and promptly started in: “I’ve never known the like of it in all my life. In that house we’d a wash-day every other week, and at that, the tubs were always full of clothes. You could never sit down to a meal but you must have a child on each side of you. You had to fix its food and help feed it in the bargain. When there was shifts to be made, they had to fetch home whole bolts of linen, and sempstresses and tailors and shoemakers never found time to go to other places in the parish, for they’d enough to do in that one place.” “But, my dear Jungfru Anna, however could the dean and his wife manage to bring up so many children?” Fru Lagerlöf said to get her well started. “Ah, but they did, though, and they turned out grand, all of them. You never saw better children. Only think! the oldest daughter, Eve--what a handy one she was at making baby things and tending little ones! And she got married, indeed, at seventeen to Curate Jansson of Skilanda, and when he died she got a dean in Västergötland. She had a lot of children, and after she’d stood a bride the first time she never showed herself again in her father’s house.” “She probably thought there were enough without her,” observed the Lieutenant, dryly. The little girls over in the chimney-corner began to giggle; but they got such a sharp look from the _jungfru_ they subsided instantly.