MÅRBACKA
Once they had a nursemaid at Mårbacka who was called Back-Kaisa. She must have been all of six feet high. She had a large-featured, swarthy, stern-looking face, her hands were hard and full of cracks, in which the children's hair would catch when she combed it, and she was heavy and mournful.
A person of that sort could hardly be said to have been especially created for the nursery, and indeed Fru Lagerlöf had deliberated a long while before engaging her. The girl had never been out to service and knew nothing of the ways of people; she had grown up on a poor backwoods croft, among the wooded hills above Mårbacka, far from any other habitation.
Probably there was no one else available, or Fru Lagerlöf would not have had her come. That the girl did not know how to make up a bed, or build a fire in a tile-stove, or prepare a bath, was understood beforehand; but she was teachable and did not mind sweeping
out the nursery every day, or dusting, or washing baby-
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