The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.

White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. "You need not go to school, if you don't want to," said his father. "If you don't want"—that was acknowledgment that he had a will of his own. Then came aunts, cousins, relations, nurses, old servants, and all called down blessings on the dead. All offered their help in making the mourning clothes—there were four small and three elder children. Young girls sat by the sickly light that fell through the sheeted windows and sewed, while they conversed in undertones. That was melancholy, and the period of mourning brought a whole chain of peculiar experiences with it. Never had the boy been the object of so much sympathy, never had he felt so many warm hands stretched out, nor heard so many friendly words.

On the next Sunday his father read a sermon of Wallin's on the text "Our friend is not dead, but she sleeps." With what extraordinary faith he took these words literally, and how well he understood how to open the wounds and heal them again! "She is not dead, but she sleeps," he repeated cheerfully. The mother really slept there in the cold anteroom, and no one expected to see her awake.

The time of burial approached; the place for the grave was bought. His father's sister-in-law helped to sew the suits of mourning; she sewed and sewed, the old mother of seven penniless children, the once rich burgher's wife, sewed for the children of the marriage which her husband had cursed.

One day she stood up and asked her brother-in-law to speak with her privately. She whispered with him in a corner of the room. The two old people embraced each other and wept. Then John's father told them that their mother would be laid in their uncle's family grave. This was a much-admired monument in the new churchyard, which consisted of an iron pillar surmounted by an urn. The boys knew that this was an honour for their mother, but they did not understand that by her burial there a family quarrel had been extinguished, and justice done after her death to a good and conscientious woman who had been despised because she became a mother before her marriage.

Now all was peace and reconciliation in the house, and they vied with one another in acts of friendliness. They looked frankly at each other, avoided anything that might cause disturbance, and anticipated each other's wishes.

Then came the day of the funeral. When the coffin had been screwed down and was carried through the hall, which was filled with mourners dressed in black, one of John's little sisters began to cry and flung herself in his arms. He took her up and pressed her to himself, as though he were her mother and wished to protect her. When he felt how her trembling little body clung close to him, he grew conscious of a strength which he had not felt for a long time. Comfortless himself he could bestow comfort, and as he quieted the child he himself grew calm. The black coffin and the crowd of people had frightened her—that was all; for the smaller children hardly missed their mother; they did not weep for her, and had soon forgotten her. The tie between mother and child is not formed so quickly, but only through long personal acquaintance. John's real sense of loss hardly lasted for a quarter of a year. He mourned for her indeed a long time, but that was more because he wished to continue in that mood, though it was only an expression of his natural melancholy, which had taken the special form of mourning for his mother.