***

Old Mamsell Fredrika sleeps quietly in her beloved home.  No one deserves more than she the sweetness of rest.  Like a Christmas angel she sat but now in a circle of children, and told them of Jesus and the shepherds, told until her eyes shone, and her withered face became transfigured.  Now in her old age no one noticed what Mamsell Fredrika looked like.  Those who saw the little, slender figure, the tiny, delicate hands and the kind, clever face, instantly longed to be able to preserve that sight in remembrance as the most beautiful of memories.

In Mamsell Fredrika’s big room, among many relics and souvenirs, there was a little, dry bush.  It was a Jericho rose, brought back by Mamsell Fredrika from the far East.  Now in the Christmas night it began to blossom quite of itself.  The dry twigs were covered with red buds, which shone like sparks of fire and lighted the whole room.

By the light of the sparks one saw that a small and slender but quite elderly lady sat in the big arm-chair and held her court.  It could not be Mamsell Fredrika herself, for she lay sleeping in quiet repose, and yet it was she.  She sat there and held a reception for old memories; the room was full of them.  People and homes and subjects and thoughts and discussions came flying.  Memories of childhood and memories of youth, love and tears, homage and bitter scorn, all came rushing towards the pale form that sat and looked at everything with a friendly smile.  She had words of jest or of sympathy for them all.

At night everything takes its right size and shape.  And just as then for the first time the stars of heaven are visible, one also sees much on earth that one never sees by day.  Now in the light of the red buds of the Jericho rose one could see a crowd of strange figures in Mamsell Fredrika’s drawing-room.  The hard “ma chere mere” was there, the goodnatured Beata Hvardagslag, people from the East and the West, the enthusiastic Nina, the energetic, struggling Hertha in her white dress.

“Can any one tell me why that person must always be dressed in white?” jested the little figure in the arm-chair when she caught sight of her.

All the memories spoke to the old woman and said:  “You have seen and experienced so much; you have worked and earned so much!  Are you not tired? will you not go to rest?”

“Not yet,” answered the shadow in the yellow arm-chair.  “I have still a book to write.  I cannot go to rest before it is finished.”

Thereupon the figures vanished.  The Jericho rose went out, and the yellow arm-chair stood empty.

In the Oesterhaninge church the dead were celebrating midnight mass.  One of them climbed up to the bell-tower and rang in Christmas; another went about and lighted the Christmas candles, and a third began with bony fingers to play the organ.  Through the open doors others came swarming in out of the night and their graves to the bright, glowing House of the Lord.  Just as they had been in life they came, only a little paler.  They opened the pew doors with rattling keys and chatted and whispered as they walked up the aisle.