"How do you do? You are not ill, are you?
I think you have grown a bit thin of late."
There was such an expression of kindliness about the old gentleman that
Clement plucked up courage and told him of his homesickness.
"What!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "Are you homesick when you are in
Stockholm? It can't be possible!" He looked almost offended. Then he
reflected that it was only an ignorant old peasant from Haelsingland that
he talked with--and so resumed his friendly attitude.
"Surely you have never heard how the city of Stockholm was founded? If
you had, you would comprehend that your anxiety to get away is only a
foolish fancy. Come with me to the bench over yonder and I will tell you
something about Stockholm."
When the old gentleman was seated on the bench he glanced down at the
city, which spread in all its glory below him, and he drew a deep
breath, as if he wished to drink in all the beauty of the landscape.
Thereupon he turned to the fiddler.
"Look, Clement!" he said, and as he talked he traced with his cane a
little map in the sand in front of them. "Here lies Uppland, and here,
to the south, a point juts out, which is split up by a number of bays.
And here we have Soermland with another point, which is just as cut up
and points straight north. Here, from the west, comes a lake filled with
islands: It is Lake Maelar.
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