Lieutenant Ekman turned his son around in order to see the fit of the trim jacket.  “When you get the gun to go with it,” he told the lad, “you will be a second Gustavus Adolphus.”

“If I am to be as great a man as Gustavus Adolphus, I shall have to go to war,” replied Birger; “and there seems to be little chance for a war now.”

“There are many peaceful ways by which a man may serve his country,” Lieutenant Ekman told his son; “but King Gustavus II had to fight to keep Sweden from being swallowed up by the other nations.”

“I could never understand how Sweden happened to have such a great fighter as Gustavus Adolphus,” said Karen; but Gerda shook a finger at her.

“Sh!” she said, “that isn’t the way to talk about your own country.  And have you forgotten Gustav Vasa?  He was the first of the Vasa line of kings; and he and Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII made the name of Vasa one of the most illustrious in Swedish history.”

“Karen will never forget Gustav Vasa,” said Birger, “after she has been to Dalarne and seen all the places where he was in hiding before he was a king.”

“Yes,” said Gerda, “there’s the barn where he worked at threshing grain, and the house where the woman lowered him out of the window in the night, and the Stone of Mora, on the bank of the river, where he spoke to the men of Dalarne and urged them to fight for freedom.”

“And there’s the stone house in Mora over the cellar where Margit Larsson hid him when the Danish soldiers were close on his track,” added Birger.  “The inscription says:—­

“’Gustav Eriksson Vasa, while in exile and wandering in Dalarne with a view of stirring up the people to fight for Fatherland and Freedom, was saved by the presence of mind of a Dalecarlian woman, and so escaped the troops sent by the Tyrant to arrest him.

“’This monument is gratefully erected by the Swedish people to the Liberator.’”

Karen laughed.  “How can you remember it so well?” she asked.  “It sounded as if you were reading it.”

“That is because I have read it so often,” replied Birger.  “Gustav Vasa is my favorite hero.  He drove the Danes out of the country and won freedom for the Swedish people.”

“He was the Father of his Country,” said Gerda, and she seized Birger’s new flag and waved it over her head.

“Come, children, it is time for you to go to school,” Fru Ekman told them; and soon Karen was trudging off to her gymnastic exercises, and the twins were clattering down the stairs with their books.

“That was a good song that Mother was singing this morning,” Birger told his sister.  “I’d like to wear spurs on my feet.  How they would rattle over these stone pavements!”

“I’d rather have ‘a crown so bright and splendid,’” said Gerda; “but I’ll have to be contented with my cooking-cap to-day instead.”  Then she bade her brother good-bye and ran up the steps of the school-house, where, after her morning lessons, she would spend an hour in the cooking-class.