728 THE AMEUI CAN-SCAN DINA VI AH REVIEW 
to celebrate. Her own name-day she could not celebrate, being named 
lieda, as Beda has been stricken out of the almanac. Nor could she cele¬ 
brate that of any member of her family, for all her dear ones were 
resting m the churchyard. She was very old, and the quilt she slept 
undei would probably outlast her. She had a cat of which she was 
very fond. Truth to tell, it drank coffee just as well as she did; but 
she could hardly bring herself to hold a party for a cat! 
Pondering, she searched her almanac again and again, for there 
she felt she must surely find the solution of her problem. 
She began at the beginning, with “The Royal House” and “Signs 
and Forecasts,” and read on, right through to “Markets and Postal 
1 1 ansmittances for 1912,” without finding anything. 
As she was reading the book for the seventh time, her glance 
rested on “Eclipses.” She noted that that year, which was the year of 
our Lord nineteen-hundred twelve, on April seventeenth there would 
be a solar eclipse It would begin at twenty minutes past high noon 
and end at 2:40 o’clock, and would cover nine-tenths of the sun’s disk. 
This she had read before, many times, without attaching any 
significance to it; but now, all at once, it became dazzlingly clear to her. 
“Now I have it!” she exclaimed. 
WaS ° n * y * or a see01l<1 or two that she felt confident; and 
then she put the thought away, fearing that the other women would 
just laugh at her. 
The next few days, however, the idea that had come to her when 
reading her almanac kept recurring to her mind, until at last she be¬ 
gan to wonder whether she hadn’t better venture. For when she 
thought about it, what friend had she in all the world she loved better 
than the Sun ? Where her hut lay not a ray of sunlight penetrated 
her room the whole winter long. She counted the days until the Sun 
would come back to her in the spring. The Sun was the only one she 
longed for, the only one who was always friendly and gracious to her 
and of whom she could never see enough. 
She looked her years, and felt them, too. Her hands shook as if 
she were in a perpetual chill and when she saw herself in the looking- 
glass, she appeared so pale and washed out, as if she had been lying 
out to bleach. It was only when she stood in a strong, warm, down¬ 
pouring sunshine that she felt like a live human being and not a walk¬ 
ing corpse. 
The more she thought about it, the more she felt there was no day 
m the whole year she would rather celebrate than the one when her 
nend the Sun battled against darkness, and after a glorious conquest, 
came forth with new splendor and majesty. 
. The seventeenth of April was not far away, but there was ample 
time to make ready for a party. So, on the day of the eclipse Stina, 
-Lina, lvajsa, Maja, and the other women all sat drinking coffee with 
