Kept Secret but not Forgotten

The robbers were hanged.

There stood an old house; it still stands there, in fact - not the home of Lady Mette Mogens, but that of another noble family.

It is in our own time. The sun is shining on the gilded spires on the turrets; little wooded isles lie like bouquets on the lake, and around them swim wild swans. There are roses growing in the garden, but the lady of the house herself is the loveliest rose, bright with happiness, the happiness of good deeds, not done outwardly before the wide world, but within the hearts of people - and there kept secret but not forgotten.

Now she goes from the mansion to a little peasant cottage in the field. In it there lives a poor, paralyzed girl. A window in the little room faces the north, where the sun does not enter, and where her only view is a patch of meadow that is shut off by the high earth around a ditch. But today there is sunshine inside; God's warm, wonderful sun is there. It comes from the south through a new window where before there had been just a wall.

The paralyzed girl sits in the warm sunshine and looks out on wood and stream; her world has become so wide and so beautiful, and all at a single word from the kindly lady of the manor.

"That word was so easy, the deed so small," she says, "and the happiness it gave me was so unspeakably great and blessed."

And that is why she does so many good deeds and remembers all those in the poor homes about her and in the rich homes, too, where there also are afflicted people. Her deeds are done in secret, and kept secret, but they are not forgotten by our Lord.

There was an old house in the middle of the great, busy city. In it were halls and chambers, but we won't enter them; we'll remain in the kitchen. And here it is snug and bright; it is clean and neat. The copper utensils shine; the table is polished, and the sink is as spotless as a freshly scrubbed larding board. All this has been done by the maid-of-all-work, who has still found time to put on her own best dress, as if she were going to church.