Elsa bruised her cheek against the edge of the second step above her. She did not know where to go, and her money was all spent except the little she had saved by going without food during part of her railway journey, and she had saved that to buy some little ornament for her new home with Arne. She might try to hire herself out, but how could she ever write back home where such happy news was expected from her, or how could she put unendurable anxiety upon those best friends by not writing at all? Svadia was so pleasant, especially in the long nightless summers. Good and kind they were to strangers there: her mother always baked waffles and carried them with coffee to the morning bedside of a guest. She could see her native meadows stretching away in the blue northern air, and the iron whip, as her mother called the scythe, beating up an appetite in those who wielded it, while she herself, a careless little maid, came bearing the second breakfast to the mowers. A quavering but hearty voice, which might have come from the mouth of her own grandmother if it had not belonged to Peter Lund’s mother, sung out a Lapp-Finn nurse song by an upper window, and Elsa knew just what syllables the dancing baby was made to emphasize. “Donsa lupon, Hopsom tup an, Lanti lira, Hopsom stira: Sprönti lupon, lupon, Hopsom tup an, tup an, Lanti lira, lira, Hopsom stira, stira.” Dance and jump, Hop like a rooster, Hop like the skatan. Perhaps this very instant--for Elsa made no calculations in longitude and time--vader’s mütter danced the baby under her home roof; and none of her people knew how faint, how outcast, how bewildered the eldest child felt sitting on steps in a strange Amerikanski town. In Elsa’s box of clothing was the finest sheepskin blanket her mother ever made, so white in fleece, and cured by buttering and scraping until the skin yielded soft like chamois leather. It was lined with scarlet flannel. She could see the storeroom of her father’s farmhouse hung thickly with such fleeces, and hear her mother say she wished Elsa could take more, since they had so little money to send with her. But Arne Sandstrom had sent the money to pay her way, because he loved her so. They were children together, and he was held as dear as a son in her own family. Elsa’s mother never distrusted him. How could it therefore be possible that Arne Sandstrom, after sending for his betrothed, could be marrying a Swede Amerikanskä fleka the very evening of her arrival? In her intensely quiet fashion the poor girl was wiping away tears as fast as they dripped down her cheeks, and now she lifted her head from the step, coming to a decision.