And her heart became still harder than the substance into which she had been turned.
"No one can be better in such society. I will not grow better here. See how they glare at me!"
And her heart became still harder, and she felt a hatred towards all mankind.
"They have a nice story to tell up there now. Oh, how I suffer!"
She listened, and heard them telling her history as a warning to children, and the little ones called her "ungodly Inger." "She was so naughty," they said, "so very wicked, that she deserved to suffer."
The children always spoke harshly of her. One day, however, that hunger and misery were gnawing her most dreadfully, and she heard her name mentioned, and her story told to an innocent child--a little girl--she observed that the child burst into tears in her distress for the proud, finely-dressed Inger.
"But will she never come up again?" asked the child.
"But if she will beg pardon, and promise never to be naughty again?"
"But she will _not_ beg pardon," they said.
"Oh, how I wish she would do it!" sobbed the little girl in great distress. "I will give my doll, and my doll's house too, if she may come up! It is so shocking for poor little Inger to be down there!"
These words touched Inger's heart; they seemed almost to make her good. It was the first time any one had said "poor Inger," and had not dwelt upon her faults. An innocent child cried and prayed for her. She was so much affected by this that she felt inclined to weep herself; but she could not, and this was an additional pain.
Years passed on in the earth above; but down where she was there was no change, except that she heard more and more rarely sounds from above, and that she herself was more seldom mentioned. At last one day she heard a sigh, and "Inger, Inger, how miserable you have made me! I foretold that you would!" These were her mother's last words on her deathbed.
And again she heard herself named by her former employers, and her mistress said,--
"Perhaps I may meet you once more, Inger. None know whither they are to go."
But Inger knew full well that her excellent mistress would never come to the place where _she_ was.
Time passed on, and on, slowly and wretchedly. Then once more Inger heard her name mentioned, and she beheld as it were, directly above her, two clear stars shining. These were two mild eyes that were closing upon earth. So many years had elapsed since a little girl had cried in childish sorrow over "poor Inger," that that child had become an old woman, whom our Lord was now about to call to himself. At that hour, when the thoughts and the actions of a whole life stand in review before the parting soul, she remembered how, as a little child, she had wept bitterly on hearing the history of Inger. That time, and those feelings, stood so prominently before the old woman's mind in the hour of death, that she cried with intense emotion,--