"Your wife can buy you another house, and you ought to consider yourself lucky to have so good-looking a wife."
"Yes, and that's what makes me sorry to give her up," complained Hansei. "However, there are only three hundred and sixty-five days in a year--but that's a good many, after all."
"And as many nights in the bargain," said Baum, laughing. Poor Hansei shuddered.
"Yes, indeed!" said he. He felt that politeness required an answer on his part.
In the mean while, Walpurga had asked her mother and Stasi to leave her alone with the child. She was kneeling beside the cradle and wetted the pillow with her tears. She kissed the child, the coverlet, and cradle, and then, getting up, said: "Farewell! A thousand times, farewell!" She had dried her tears, and was about to leave the room, when the door opened from without and her mother entered.
"I'll help you," said she. "You'll be either twice as happy, or twice as miserable, when you return, and will make us just as happy or as miserable as you are."
Then she took Walpurga's left hand in hers, and, in a commanding voice, said: "Put your right hand on your child's head!"
"What's that for, mother?"
"Do as I bid you. Swear by your child's head and by the hand I hold in mine, that you'll remain good and pure, no matter what temptations may assail you. Remember you're a wife, a mother, a daughter! Do you swear this with all your heart?"
"I do, mother, so help me God! But there's no need of such an oath."