# Mårbacka/Part 1, Chapter 8

They had said good-bye to Fru Strömberg and "Little Mårbacka." The children had packed away their precious sea-shells and the grown-ups had locked their trunks. They were now going aboard the steamer that was to bear them away from Strömstad.
A lot of people had gathered at the wharf. There stood Captain Strömberg, their boating companions, and other summer visitors whose acquaintance they had made, and many, many more.
"All the old pilots and skippers and fishermen in town must be here," observed a gentleman who had cruised with the Mårbacka folk.
"Yes; and all the fishwives and female bath attendants to boot," said another.
"They must have come down to bid Gustaf goodbye," Fru Lagerlöf remarked. "He seems to know everyone."
Lieutenant Lagerlöf had to say farewell to so many that he came near losing the boat. They all knew he had come to Strömstad to seek a cure for a little child that could not walk, and had taken this op​portunity to offer their felicitations on the happy outcome.
"Ay, but it's good, Lieutenant, to see the little gal standin' on the deck with the other kiddies," said an old fisherman.
"It must have been your weakfish, Olaus, that set her up."
"Ay, weakfish's good eatin'," the old man nodded.
The Lieutenant had already turned to a group of bath attendants.
"I give you thanks," he said, "for you, also, had a share in the good work."
"You must come aboard, Gustaf," Fru Lagerlöf shouted from the deck. "The siren has sounded for the third time."
At the very last moment two little girls ran up the gangplank and over to the Lagerlöf girls. They curtsied, shook hands, wished them bon voyage, slipped Anna and Selma each a parcel, then hurried ashore.
They were the daughters of the confectioner with whom Anna had played all summer. Selma hardly knew them at all, and was quite overwhelmed by their kindness in giving her, too, a parting gift.
Unfolding the wrapper, she found something very pretty—a strip of bright red satin ribbon, pasted on a bit of cardboard, on which there were some letters embroidered in black silk.
"It's a bookmark," Back-Kaisa said; "and that you should lay in the prayer book."
​"'Remembrance' it says there," her mother explained. "That means you must never forget the little girl who worked it for you."
The red satin ribbon with the black embroidered letters nestled between the covers of her prayer book for many, many years. When on a Sunday at church she would open the book and let her eyes rest on the bit of ribbon, it carried her back in memory to days long gone by.
She sensed the odours of the sea and before her eyes rose a vision of boats and sea-faring folk—hardly the sea itself, but sea-shells and jelly-fish and crabs and star-fish and weakfish and mackerel. Then from some obscure recess of memory emerged the little red house in Karlagatan. She saw the bird of paradise, Fru Strömberg, the Jacob, Gray Island, Östra Hamngatan, the Uddeholm, and the three horses that drew the big carriage. And last, she saw the horses turn in on a large sward, surrounded by low red buildings and enclosed by a white fence. They stopped before a wide red house, with small windows and a little porch, and she heard all in the carriage cry as with one voice: "Thank God we're home again!"
The others, she remembered, recognized the place at once as Mårbacka, but not she. Had she been alone she would not have known what place it was. To be sure, she remembered her home, though until then she had never seen how it looked.
On the porch stood a little sweet-faced, slightly bent, white-haired old lady in a striped skirt and black ​jacket. That was her grandmother. Her she remembered quite well, though she had never before noticed her appearance.
It was the same with her brother Daniel and the baby, the housekeeper and Othello the spaniel—they were all quite new to her. True, she remembered them in a way; but this was the first time she had actually seen them.
Moreover, sitting in the little church, her head bowed over the prayer book, she knew that on that Strömstad visit she had not only learned to walk but to see.
It was thanks to that journey that she remembered her nearest and dearest as they were in their prime, when life was a joy to them. But for that, everything relating to those times would have faded out of mind. But with the help of the little red ribbon they lived on. "Let not forgetfulness grow over all this," the ribbon said to her. "Remember your parents, who gave themselves no rest till they had found a cure for you. Remember Back-Kaisa, her great love and patience, how she braved the terrors of land and sea for your sake."