Thus, even the children's mouths spoke hard words of her.
But one day, while grief and hunger gnawed her hollow frame, and she heard her name mentioned and her story told to an innocent child, a little girl, she became aware that the little one burst into tears at the tale of the haughty, vain Ingé.
"But will Ingé never come up here again?" asked the little girl.
And the reply was, "She will never come up again."
"But if she were to say she was sorry, and to beg pardon, and say she would never do so again?"
"Yes, then she might come; but she will not beg pardon," was the reply.
"I should be so glad if she would," said the little girl; and she was quite inconsolable. "I'll give my doll and all my playthings if she may only come up. It's too dreadful—poor Ingé!"
And these words penetrated to Ingé's inmost heart, and seemed to do her good. It was the first time any one had said, "Poor Ingé," without adding anything about her faults: a little innocent child was weeping and praying for mercy for her. It made her feel quite strangely, and she herself would gladly have wept, but she could not weep, and that was a torment in itself.
While years were passing above her, for where she was there was no change, she heard herself spoken of more and more seldom. At last, one day a sigh struck on her ear: "Ingé, Ingé, how you have grieved me! I said how it would be!" It was the last sigh of her dying mother.
Occasionally she heard her name spoken by her former employers, and they were pleasant words when the woman said, "Shall I ever see thee again, Ingé? One knows not what may happen."