Ib and Little Christine

Inside was sunlight, the beaming sunlight of a child's two bright eyes; and the singing of the larks sounded in the words that came from the little Christine's rosy, laughing lips. She sat on Ib's knee, and Ib was both father and mother to her, for her own parents were dead and had vanished from her mind as a dream vanishes alike from the mind of a child or a grown man. Ib lived in the neat, pretty house, for he was a prosperous man now, while the little girl's mother rested in the churchyard for the poor in Copenhagen.

Ib had money, said people, gold from out of the black earth, and he had his little Christine, too.