However, this leaves Loella with the huge task of looking after her brothers on her own. As long as their neighbours Cousin Carl and his brother David are able to visit them every once in a while, and bring them provisions, this is a tough but not impossible job. Unfortunately, Carl then has an accident that leaves him incapable of looking after Loella and her brothers in person. David still visits sometimes but he is only a boy of Loella´s age.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Loella´s mother has charged a friend of hers, Agda Lundkvist, with the job of looking after Loella´s two brothers. Agda isn´t very enthusiastic about the task and has delayed her visit to Loella for as long as she could. But because Loella´s mother is paying her, she can´t possibly refuse. When she does go to see Loella, Loella refuses to let her brothers go. The local authorities have to come down to the house in the woods to place Conrad and Rudolph in Agda´s care by force and take Loella to an orphanage in the nearby city.

Troubled by her parent’s abandonment and by having to take care of her playful young brothers without money, Loella escapes into her fantasy world. She has found a replacement father in Papa Pellerin, a scarecrow in the fields near her house. She brings him food and clothes, and talks to him about her troubles. He really is her only friend, because she doesn´t appreciate any comments on her present state from either strangers or acquaintances. To her new class mates in the city she keeps up the pretence that she does have loving parents, to the extent that she even buys them Christmas gifts.

Loella´s fantasies take on wilder and wilder shapes as she envisages her father´s return. But time flies, and even when Cousin Carl recovers and Loella and her brothers are reunited in their house in the woods, she keeps hoping that her father might one day return…