Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/101

Rh not, for she had pulled off their wings and made creeping insects of them. That was indeed a torment added to her gnawing hunger; she seemed at last to be absolutely empty.

"If this is to go on long I shan't be able to bear it," said she; but it did go on, and bear it she must.

Then a scalding tear fell upon her forehead, it trickled over her face and bosom right down to the loaf; then another fell, and another, till there was a perfect shower.

Who was crying for little Inger! Had she not a mother on earth? Tears of sorrow shed by a mother for her child will always reach it; but they do not bring healing, they burn and make the torment fifty times worse. Then this terrible hunger again, and she not able to get at the bread under her feet. She felt at last as if she had been feeding upon herself, and had become a mere hollow reed which conducts every sound. She distinctly heard everything that was said on earth about herself, and she heard nothing but hard words.

Certainly her mother wept bitterly and sorrowfully, but at the same time she said, "Pride goes before a fall! There was your misfortune, Inger! How you have grieved your mother."

Her mother and everyone on earth knew all about her sin, how she had stepped upon the loaf, and sunk down under the earth, and so was lost. The cowherd had told them so much; he had seen it himself from the hillock where he was standing.

"How you have grieved your mother, Inger," said the poor woman. "But then I always said you would!"

"Oh, that I had never been born!" thought Inger then. "I should have been much better off. My mother's tears are no good now."

She heard the good people, her employers, who had been like parents to her, talking about her. "She was a sinful child," they said. "She did not value the gifts of God, but trod them under foot. She will find it hard to open the door of mercy."