"Put your hand into it," urged Hansei. "Oh, how good it feels to stir about in the gold that way."
The grandmother did not comply with his wish, but kept murmuring to herself.
The child in the next room cried, and Hansei called out:
"The freeholder's daughter's awake. Good morning, freeholder's daughter!" said he, while the two women went out to the child. Then he took up the bag of gold, shook it, and said:
"Just listen; you never heard such music before."
The grandmother lifted the child out of the bed and said: "Hansei, just do as I tell you, and put the gold in the warm crib of the innocent child. That'll bless it, and no matter whose hands the gold may have been in, that consecrates it and brings a blessing with it."
"Yes, mother; we can do that." Turning to Walpurga, he added: "Mother always has such pretty notions. You know it'll do the gold good in the warm nest. Yes," said he to the little child, "they've put lots of gold in your cradle. We'll take one piece and have a hole drilled through it, and you shall get it when you become confirmed. Only keep good."
"But now I must go over to Grubersepp's," said he, at last.
Walpurga was obliged to tell that she had already been looking for him there, that morning. She now realized how prone she was to give way to exaggerated fears, and determined to break herself of the habit.
The grandmother, Walpurga and the child were happy together at home, and the mother related that just three months before Walpurga was born, she had been at the farm for the last time, and that was to attend her brother's wedding.