“I do not want any thing of them, but on the contrary, I take them something,” said Amrie.
They met an old man with a scythe on his shoulder, going to the field, and Amrie’s companion asked him, at the same time winking cunningly, “Whether the old miser, Farmer Landfried, was at home?”
AMRIE HELPED THE OLD MAN CAREFULLY TO RISE.—Page [250].
“I believe so, but I am not certain,” said the old man with the scythe; and as he went on, Amrie saw a certain twinkling in his eyes. She looked steadily in the face of her companion, and suddenly she recognized through the fallen features the man to whom she had once given water to drink upon the Holder Meadow. “Wait,” she said softly to herself, “I have caught you,” and aloud, “It is wrong of you to speak thus of the farmer to a stranger like myself, that you do not know, and that may perhaps be a relation of his. What you say of him may be only slander; and should he appear close, he certainly has a good heart, and does not choose to ring the great bell to tell the good he does. Beside, one who has such good, honorable children, must be honorable himself. It may be also, that before the world he makes himself worse than he is, because it is not worth the trouble to try to please others; and I am of the same opinion.”
“You have a good tongue of your own. Where do you come from?”
“Not from this neighborhood. From about the Black Forest.”
“What is the place called?”
“Holdenbrunn.”
“Ah! and you came on foot?”