“She has transfigured our dark fate. Blessings on her name!”
The dead joined in, in a thousandfold echo: “Blessings on her name!”
“Sister,” whispered Mamsell Fredrika, “can you not forbid them to make me, poor, sinful being, proud?”
“But, sisters, sisters,” continued the voice, “she has turned against our race with all her great power. At her cry for freedom and work for all, the old, despised livers on charity have died out. She has broken down the tyranny that fenced in childhood. She has stirred young girls towards the wide activity of life. She has put an end to loneliness, to ignorance, to joylessness. No unhappy, despised old Mamsells without aim or purpose in life will ever exist again; none such as we have been.”
Again resounded the echo of the shades, merry as a hunting-song in the wood which is sung by a happy throng of children: “Blessed be her memory!”
Thereupon the dead swarmed out of the church, and Mamsell Fredrika wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.
“I will not go home with you,” said her dead sister. “Will you not stop here now also?”
“I should like to, but I cannot. There is a book which I must make ready first.”
“Well, good-night then, and beware of the knight of the church road,” said her dead sister, and smiled roguishly in her old way.
Then Mamsell Fredrika drove home. All Årsta still slept, and she went quietly to her room, lay down and slept again.