ed Nils, while he cut the big cake
into generous pieces, and offered the simple entertainment to the
teacher. Of course the driver did not refuse the proposed refreshment,
nor did Nils hesitate to help himself, while the mistress was taking her
coffee and glancing round the premises.

All was fresh and clean about her. The windows had evidently been open
since early morning, and the closets and shelves could well afford to be
displayed through the doors more than half ajar.

"Thanks, Nils," said the mistress, as she took the boy's hand after the
refreshment.

"Thanks and welcome to the new teacher!" was the reply.

"Now I shall go in and look at the schoolroom while Petter and you
furnish my room for me. The sofa should stand there, and the bureau
there. The rest I can leave to you," said Tora, as she disappeared.

Nils unfolded a strip of rag carpeting and "criss-crossed" it round the
room, whispering to himself, "Mother said there were to be no footmarks
left behind us."

The schoolroom was but a big, bare room--no maps on the walls, none of
the modern aids for instruction, save that the space between the two
windows that looked out towards the meadow had been painted, to be used
as a blackboard: "a useless, new-fangled notion" the rustics had called
this forward step in the way of education.

In front of the blackboard stood a wooden armchair for the teacher. The
benches were low, and the desks were of the simplest sort, saving one,
which was larger and higher, which the teacher at once understood was
the permanent arrangement for Nils. Her heart went out towards the big,
kind fellow, on whom so sore a trial had been laid in his youth.

Along one side of the schoolroom there were four horses standing silent,
but not "saddled and bridled," as in old nursery stories. Without head
or tail, they stood on four sprawling legs--supports for two long,
"shallow boxes" that had been in the schoolroom for fifty years or more.
Wood was abundant in the old days, and unskilful hands had done the
work; so the boxes were but clumsy specimens of carpentry, and deep
enough, it seemed, to hold sand for all the long winter through. The
grandfathers of the neighbourhood could remember when these receptacles
were their writing-desks, in which, stick in hand, they were taught to
trace in the smoothed sand their names or any higher efforts of
chirography that the teacher might demand. These superannuated articles
of furniture were