Today is Friday.

And as so often happens at coffee parties, the ladies began to talk about their servant problems. Apparently they had not been able to get very good servants, for they were not at all satisfied with them, and they agreed that it really was better not to have any servants at all. It was much more satisfactory to do things yourself because then you at least knew that things were done right. Pippi sat on the sofa listening, and after the ladies had been talking a while she said that once her grandmother had had a servant named Malin and she had had chilblains on her feet, but otherwise there had been nothing wrong with her and the only annoying thing had been that as soon as company had come she would rush at them and bite their legs and bark. The ladies acted as if they had heard nothing. They continued to talk. Mrs. Bergen said if her Rosa had been only clean, maybe she could keep her, but she was a regular pig-. Pippi interrupted that she ought to have seen Malin. Mrs. Settergren asked the children to go up to the nursery immediately. Tommy and Annika took hold of Pippi and pulled her out of the room and up the stairs.