When Nils
and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people in
the barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground floor stood
six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericson
families, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was a
big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In one
corner of the barn, behind a pile of green-and-white-striped
watermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old people; the younger
guests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire spools, and the
children tumbled about in the haymow. The box-stalls Clara had
converted into booths. The framework was hidden by goldenrod and
sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered with wild
grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watched
over her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the next
her kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara was
already cutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the
third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed
lemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had
thought it inadvisable to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika
had come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after
his arrival the wagon-shed was much frequented by the men.

"Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?" little Hilda whispered,
when Nils went up to her stall and asked for lemonade.

Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girl
and watching the people. The barn faced the west, and the sun,
pouring in at the big doors, filled the whole interior with a golden
light, through which filtered fine particles of dust from the
haymow, where the children were romping. There was a great
chattering from the stall where Johanna Vavrika exhibited to the
admiring women her platters heaped with fried chicken, her roasts of
beef, boiled tongues, and baked hams with cloves stuck in the crisp
brown fat and garnished with tansy and parsley. The older women,
having assured themselves that there were twenty kinds of cake, not
counting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to the corner
behind the pile of watermelons, put on their white aprons, and fell
to their knitting and fancy-work. They were a fine company of old
women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there
together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent
long, quivering shafts of gold through the