Gerda in Sweden | Page 4

a shout of heartiest greeting. Their eyes were sparkling with fun, their cheeks rosy from a run in the fresh spring air, and their arms were filled with bundles of all sizes and shapes.
"Ho, Birger! Oh, Gerda!" was their cry; "it took us an endless time to get past the porter's wife at the street door, and she made us answer a dozen questions. 'To what apartment were we going? Whom did we wish to see? Why did we all come together?'"
"And did you tell her that you were coming to the third apartment to see the Ekman twins, and were bringing clothing and gifts to fill a surprise box?" asked Gerda, holding up her apron for the packages.
"Yes," replied a jolly, round-faced boy whom the others called Oscar, "and we had to explain that we didn't know who was to have the box, nor why you telephoned to us to bring the gifts to-night, when you said only last week that you wouldn't want them until the first of June."
"There has been a hard storm on the northern coast, and Father is going by train as far as Lule?, to see if it did much damage to the lighthouses," Gerda explained. "He thinks that the storm may have caused great suffering among the poor people, so we are going to send our box with him, instead of waiting to send it by boat in June. He has to start on his trip very early in the morning, so the box must be ready to-night."
Everyone began talking at once, and a tall girl with pretty curly hair, who had something important to say, had to raise her voice above the din before she could be heard. "Let us write a letter and put it into the box with the gifts," she suggested.
"Ja s?! Yes, of course! That is good!" they all cried; and while Gerda ran to get pen and ink, the boys and girls gathered around a table that stood in the center of the room.
"Dear Yunker Unknown:--" began a mischievous-looking boy, pretending to write with a great flourish.
"Nonsense!" cried Sigrid Lundgren. "The box is filled with skirts and aprons and caps and embroidered belts, and all sorts of things for a girl. Don't call her Yunker. Yunker means farmer."
"Well, then, 'Dear Jungfru Unknown:--'" the boy corrected, with more flourishes.
"I wish we knew who would get the box, then we should know just what to say," said little Hilma Berling.
"She is probably just your age, and is named Selma," said Birger; and everyone laughed over his choice of a name.
"Yes," agreed Oscar, "and she lives in the depths of the white northern forests, with only a white polar bear and a white snowy owl for company."
"I don't believe we shall ever be able to write a letter," said Birger, shaking his head. "How can we write to some one we have never seen?" and he sat himself down on a red painted cricket beside the tall stove and began carving the cover of the work-box.
"We have made all the little gifts in that box for some one we have never seen," said Sigrid. "It ought to be just as easy to write her a letter."
"No, Sigrid," Birger told her; "it is the hardest thing in the world to write a letter, especially if you have nothing to say. I would rather make a box and carve it, than write half of a letter."
"Here comes Mother. She will tell us what to write," said Gerda.
"Why not write about some of the good times you have together here in Stockholm," suggested her mother, and she took up the pen and waited for some one to start the letter.
"Our dear Girl-friend in the North:--" said Hilma for a beginning; and as Fru Ekman wrote at their dictation, first one and then another added a message, until finally she leaned back in her chair and told them to listen to what she had written.
* * * * *
"We are a club of capital boys and girls because we live in Sweden's capital city," she began.
"That was from Oscar," interrupted Gerda; but her mother continued,--"and we send you this box for a surprise.
"We go to school and have to study very hard; but we find a little time for play every day. Sometimes we go to the park, but when it storms we are glad to stay in the house and work at sewing or sloyd. So, ever since Yule-tide, we have been making little gifts for you,--the girls with their needles, the boys with their saws and knives.
"We hope you will enjoy wearing the caps and aprons as much as we have enjoyed making them; and if you have a brother, please give him the watch and the leather watch-chain. It is a