One winter’s evening the schoolmaster and his wife were sitting by the kitchen fire, talking in earnest whispers, while a little girl of twelve played by herself in a corner of the room.  The little girl was their daughter, and her name was Gertrude.  She was a fair little lass, with flaxen hair and plump, rosy cheeks, but she did not have that wise and prematurely old look which one so often sees in the children of schoolmasters.

The corner in which she sat was her playground.  There she had gathered together a variety of things:  bits of coloured glass, broken teacups and saucers, pebbles from the banks of the river, little square blocks of wood, and more rubbish of the same sort.

She had been let play in peace all the evening; neither her father nor her mother had disturbed her.  Busy as she was she did not want to be reminded of lessons and chores.  It didn’t look as if there were going to be any extra sums to do for father that night, she thought.

She had a big work in hand, the little girl back there in her corner.  Nothing less than making a whole parish!  She was going to build up the entire district with both church and schoolhouse; the river and the bridge were also to be included.  Everything had to be quite complete, of course.

She had already got a good part of it done.  The whole wreath of hills that went round the parish was made up of smaller and larger stones.  In all the crevices she had planted forests of little spruce twigs, and with two jagged stones she had erected Klack Mountain and Olaf’s Peak on either side of the Dal River.  The long valley in between the mountains had been covered with mould taken from one of her mother’s flowerpots.  So far everything was all right, only she had not been able to make the galley blossom.  But she comforted herself by pretending it was early springtime, before grass and grain had sprouted.

The broad, beautiful Dal River that flows through the valley she had managed to lay out effectively with a long and narrow piece of glass, and the floating bridge connecting both sides of the parish, had been making on the water this long while.  The more distant farms and settlements were marked off by pieces of red brick.  Farthest north, amid fields and meadows, lay the Ingmar Farm.  To the east was the village of Kolasen, at the foot of the mountain.  At the extreme south, where the river, with rapids and falls, leaves the valley and rushes under the mountain, was Bergsana Foundry.

The entire landscape was now ready, with country roads laid out along the river, sanded and gravelled.  Groves had also been set out, here and there, on the plains and near the cottages.  The little girl had only to cast a glance at her structure of glass and stone and earth and twigs to see before her the whole parish.  And she thought it all very beautiful.