s you."

"Well, my dear, I will say nothing against that. It is good for the
living to miss the dead, as long as they do not wish them back. As for
me, Erica, I feel as if I could not but miss you, go where I may."

"O, do not say that, Ulla."

"Why not say it if I feel it? Who could be displeased with me for
grasping still at the hand that has smoothed my bed so long, when I am
going to some place that will be very good, no doubt, but where
everything must be strange at first? He who gave you to me, to be my
nurse, will not think the worse of me for missing you, wherever I may
be."

"There will be little Henrica," observed Erica. "Ah yes! there is
nothing I think of more than that. That dear child died on my shoulder.
Fain would her mother have had her in her arms at the last; but she was
in such extremity that to move her would have been to end all at once;
and so she died away, with her head on my shoulder. I thought then it
was a sign that I should be the first to meet her again. But I shall
take care and not stand in the way of her mother's rights."

Here Ulla grew so earnest in imagining her meeting with Henrica, still
fancying her the dependent little creature she had been on earth, that
she was impatient to be gone. Erica's idea was that this child might
now have become so wise and so mighty in the wisdom of a better world,
as to be no such plaything as Ulla supposed; but she said nothing to
spoil the old woman's pleasure.

When Peder came in, to sit beside his old companion's bed, and sing her
to sleep, she told him that she hoped to be by when he opened his now
dark eyes upon the sweet light of a heavenly day; and, if she might, she
would meantime make up his dreams for him, and make him believe that he
saw the most glorious sights of old Norway,--more glorious than are to
be seen in any other part of this lower world. There should be no end
to the gleaming lakes, and dim forests, and bright green valleys, and
silvery waterfalls that he should see in his dreams, if she might have
the making of them. There was no end to the delightful things Ulla
looked forward to, and the kind things she hoped to be able to do for
those she left behind, when once she should have quitted her present
helpless state: and she thought so much of these things, that when M.
Kollsen arrived, he found that, instead of her needing to be reconciled
to death, she was impatient to be gone. The first thing he heard her
sa