Still hungry and out of humour Peter crept down into the garden and stole whatever he could find to eat there.
Then the steamer arrived with Brundin’s guests. There were corn dealers, greengrocers, and butchers from the town, nothing but rogues that he did business with. They at once sat down to smoke and drink punch at a long table on the terrace. From the beginning there were heard shouts of coarse, bass voices and roars of laughter, and it was clear that they had laid a solid foundation for their merriment in some inn in town. Frida, fresh and not at all shy, in spite of her seventeen years, flitted about the whole time bearing trays frequently replenished and was vigorously pinched, tickled and caressed. But in the midst of all shone Brundin in his check waistcoat, and whenever you looked at him he sat with glass uplifted and “Your health” on his lips.
Peter hovered about, gloomy and unnoticed, on the fringe of this festive party. He loitered about the bedroom window, he crept into the lilac hedge. In the end he secured himself up among the branches of the big maple tree below the signal-guns on the terrace. From there he saw them light the gay-coloured lanterns and bring in the enormous dishes of crayfish, with their fennel crowns to the accompaniment of wild shouts of welcome. The lanterns swung to and fro and the candles in the big candlesticks from off the sideboard flickered and flamed as if intoxicated, and cast a shimmering light on napkins tied round fat necks, on rolled-up shirt sleeves and rows of sparkling glasses simultaneously raised.
To crown all Peter saw how Stellan and Laura who had been leaping round with eager and unrestrained curiosity amongst the merry guests were called by the bailiff, and how each was given a big portion of crayfish to eat at the table. Breathlessly Peter held fast to his branch and communed with the whispering gloom of the great, dark tree top.
Then an old fellow rose and thanked the host. He fumbled with his wine glass and now and then squeezed out a word, just as if he had been on the point of suffocation before he got it out. And his shadow, ragged and giantlike, mounted the loosening plaster of the walls of Selambshof.