Up in Stockholm the solemn bells were ringing, and mourning garments and mourning hats were everywhere. In stately mansions and in dreary attics real tears of sorrow were shed. The good princess was dead. In the palace, in a grand apartment all draped in black, lay her silent, wasted body, on a pompous funeral bier. Throngs of the loftiest and the noblest of the land passed slowly by, in solemn procession, to pay their last respects to the humble princess and the true-hearted woman who had gone to her reward. Rough peasants and the poor of the city came too, with their tribute of real mourning, grateful to see once more the face of the loving friend who had cast sunlight into their shadowed lives.
Far away in the country little Nono's heart was sorrowful. _His_ princess was dead! No one had been able to really comfort him. Suddenly he seemed to see her bright and glad in the Holy City. She was at home at last! She was where she belonged--where "the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick;" where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest." Nono had now his princess in heaven, and he went about his work with something of the light in his face which he had seemed to see in hers.
From the hospital there came the news that little Decima was drooping and sad. She said she must cry because the princess would never take her on her knee again and call her "Decima Desideria." The child declared she was well now, and she wanted to go home. Indeed she was as well as she could ever be, the doctors said, but she would be a cripple for life. She must always walk with a crutch. A change would do the child good, was the universal opinion; so home came the little girl, to her mother's great delight.
"Such a dear little useful creature as she had learned to be," Karin said, and it was true. As to knitting and crochet-work, no one in that parish could match her. The little lame girl really brought sunshine back to the golden house. She had such sweet songs to sing, and such hymns for Sunday, that Jan said it was quite like going to church to hear her, or more like hearing the little angels doing their best up in heaven. To Pelle she particularly attached herself, laughing merrily, as she said they belonged together, as they both walked with a stick.