Lieutenant Lagerlöf, with wine glass in hand, stood in the middle of the floor announcing the betrothal of his sister Lovisa to Pastor Milén, the clergyman at Ämtervik. Then there was much toasting and congratulating. Everyone looked happy and pleased, which was not surprising. Mamselle Lovisa was a woman of forty, and her relatives had hardly expected that she would marry. Pastor Milén was a widower with four small children who needed a mother’s care. It was all so right and fitting. Kaisa Nilsdotter had heard that when Mamselle Lovisa was young she would not marry because she had not the heart to leave her parents. But now that they were dead she wanted a home of her own. She had also heard that Mamselle Lovisa did not care to go far from Mårbacka, and, happily, the parsonage was but five minutes’ walk from there. It sort of cut into Kaisa Nilsdotter that everything should go so well for Mamselle Lovisa--she who had made a whortleberry crown for her. Stepping back from the doorway, she saw the old housekeeper, who had come in to hear the betrothal announcement, standing just behind her. Kaisa Nilsdotter laid a heavy hand on the housekeeper’s shoulder. “I came here to find out whether Mamselle Lovisa made my bridal-crown of whortleberry green,” she said. “But maybe ’twouldn’t do to ask her about it on a day like this?” The housekeeper was rather startled, but she was not one to be easily thrown off her guard. “How can you say anything so idiotic, Kaisa!” she flouted. “Everyone in the house knows what a lot of bother Mamselle Lovisa had with your bridal-crown. We all ran about to every cottage around here, and begged the myrtle.” Kaisa stared at her as if searching her very soul to get at the truth. “But the whole parish says so,” she declared. The old housekeeper, whose sole thought was to pacify the woman and get her out of the house, lest she disturb Mamselle Lovisa on this of all days, said: “But I tell you, Kaisa, that as sure as Mamselle Lovisa’s own bridal-crown will be of myrtle was yours of myrtle, and of nothing else.” “I’ll bear those words in mind,” said Kaisa. “And when I see what Mamselle Lovisa’s bridal-crown is bound with, then I’ll know how it was with mine.” “You can rest easy as to that,” the housekeeper assured her. The two then went into the kitchen, and Kaisa, looking quite calm now, put out her hand in farewell. “I may as well be going,” she said. “Anyhow, I don’t suppose I could see Mamselle Lovisa to-day to speak to.” With that she was off. The housekeeper went back to her work, and, in the rush and excitement, forgot about the woman. It was not till a day or two afterward that she told Mamselle Lovisa what Kaisa Nilsdotter had said and what she herself had replied. Mamselle Lovisa went white as a sheet. “Oh, Maja!” she cried, “how could you say that! It would have been better to tell her that I put a few little sprays of whortleberry green in her crown.”