At that moment approached an elderly woman, poorly clad, blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—­but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous.  This was “Lame Maren,” as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman’s.  “Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names”—­for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother—­ “hard that your boy should be told you are good-for-nothing.”

“What! did the sheriff really say so, child?” said the Laundress, and her lips quivered.  “So you have a mother who is good-for-nothing!  Perhaps he is right, only he should not say so to the child—­but I must not complain, for good things have come to me from that house.”

“Why yes, you were in service there once, when the sheriff’s parents were alive, many years since.  There is a grand dinner at the sheriff’s to-day,” went on Maren; “it would have been put off, though, had not everything been prepared.  I heard it from the porter.  News came in a letter, an hour ago, that the sheriff’s younger brother, at Copenhagen, is dead.”

“Dead!” repeated the Laundress, and she turned as white as a corpse.

“What do you care about it?” said Maren.  “To be sure, you must have known him, since you served in the house.”

“Is he dead? he was the best, the kindest of creatures! indeed, there are not many like him,” and the tears rolled down her cheeks.  “O, the world is turning round, I feel so ill!” and she clung to the washing-stool for support.

“You are ill, indeed!” cried Maren.  “Take care, the stool will overturn.  I had better get you home at once.”

“But the linen?”

“I will look after that—­only lean on me.  The boy can stay here and watch it till I come back and wash what is left; it is not much.”

The poor laundress’s limbs trembled under her.  “I have stood too long in the cold water; I have had no food since yesterday.  O, my poor child!” and she wept.

The boy cried too, as he sat alone beside the brook, watching the wet linen.  Slowly the two women made their way up the little alley and through the street, past the sheriff’s house.  Just as she reached her humble home, the laundress fell down on the paving-stones, fainting.  She was carried upstairs and put to bed.  Kind Maren hastened to prepare a cup of warm ale—­that was the best medicine in this case, she thought—­and then went back to the brook and did the best she could with the linen.

In the evening she was again in the laundress’s miserable room.  She had begged from the sheriff’s cook a few roasted potatoes and a little bit of bacon, for the sick woman.  Maren and the boy feasted upon these, but the patient was satisfied with the smell of them—­that, she declared, was very nourishing.

Supper over, the boy went to bed, lying crosswise at his mother’s feet, with a coverlet made of old carpet-ends, blue and red, sewed together.