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SKETCHES. 819
strated ; the brother looked black and fierce ; all in vain
— the bill did not grow less, and from the ranks of the
seven servant-girls was heard a low growling about “a
shabby conipany, that wants to bargain.” Then stalked in
through the open door the cousin with the moustaches,
looking awful and threatening; but he ended by strutting
with large strides through the kitchen, thundering between
his teeth: “This is scandalous !”
Then the brother made a tack or two round the seven
servant-girls, who, in some alarm, had gathered in a knot
in the middle of the kitchen floor, while he repeated with
the calmness of despair: “This is a confounded shame !”
whereupon all three sailed out of the kitchen to the car-
riages, in which the fresh morning soon made them for-
get their night’s lodgings, the exorbitant charge, and the
league of the servant-girls.
When the bright beams of the morning sun looked in
through the window of No. 20, an angel bore away a little
child’s spirit, and carried it to the throne of the Almighty.
With her child’s lifeless body in her arms, the mother
sat, closing with kisses the eyelids of the beautiful, now
lustreless, eyes, and as she had sat all night with her child
in her arms, so she sat all day, rocking it silently.
Towards evening she asked whether any messenger had
arrived for her with a letter, —- but none had arrived. On
the second day old Mother Bengta returned, stoutly assert-
ing that she had delivered the letter, but that she had re-
ceived no answer.
One, two, three, four — five days passed, and the stranger
wandered about, pale as a ghost, without either eating,
drinking, or sleeping; only asking, ever and anon: “ Is
there no letter for me?” On the sixth day she laid her
little child, with the aid of the clergyman of the parish, in
its silent grave, and when it was buried, a light covering of
snow spread itself over the tiny hillock, and it comforted
the heart of the poor mother. Long she sat beside the
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