"Dear me, only too well! I don't know why it is that every one thinks life could not go on happily without me. I wish I was not quite so old; my comfort is that my grandmother lived to be eighty-three, and for aught any one can tell, it might have been ninety-three; those old people who can't read and write often make mistakes. Perhaps I shall live as long myself. I enjoy my food and my sleep. There is a blessing on all that goes on in this house. Look at the wood; has it not grown nicely? and it is all our own. As truly as that forest grows and thrives where God planted it, so truly does all good grow and thrive with us. Are they not fine young trees? we shall live to see them grow strong and tall."
Katharine could not wait for that, and as she went off with the twins, accompanied by their mother, Lenz, and Annele, Franzl called after her from the kitchen: "Katharine, you must make up your mind to stand god-mother next time."
That is the story of Lenz and Annele of the Morgenhalde; which explains why the young, white-haired mother asked her son, when he was setting off for foreign lands, to bring her home a sprig of edelweiss.
When Lenz returned from starting the two youths on their way, he found a garland of fresh flowers about his mother's picture. Eighteen years ago that day she had been buried, and Annele always kept the anniversary. They felt in their hearts, though they never said it, that her blessed memory bloomed ever fresh within them, like the flowers in the field.
Faller's widow and daughter sat down to dinner with them at noon. "If my husband had but lived to see our two sons set off on their travels together!" sighed the poor woman. Lenz tried to comfort her by telling how well the twins were doing that Katharine had adopted. One had already risen to be sergeant in the army, the other was his adopted father's assistant, and would doubtless be his heir. Faller's daughter, a tall, slender girl of fifteen, said she had promised to write to William and her brother the first of every month.
After dinner Lenz sat down to his work as usual. Eighteen years ago it had calmed a greater grief than the departure of his son occasioned him to-day. Annele sat by him with her sewing; no longer full of an unrest which she communicated to him, but rather shedding a beneficent influence around her. His work prospered better when she looked on. She spoke little, and the few words she did say showed within what a narrow circle her thoughts were now confined. "William takes six shirts with him, made from the cotton your blessed mother spun."
The places of the two apprentices were already filled; for parents the country round were anxious to have their boys learn their trade with Lenz. One of the new-comers was, to Franzl's great delight, a grandson of the weight-manufacturer of Knuslingen.
Towards evening the schoolmaster came up the hill with a great bundle of papers under his arm, labelled in large letters, "Acts of the Clockmakers' Union." He asked Lenz to go a little way into the wood with him before the other members arrived, and during their absence Annele ranged two rows of chairs about the room, for Lenz was now president of the association.
Edelweiss.