“Well, if it did not seem to me as though I knew you,” said the farmer’s wife. “Bless you, my child.” She reached her her hand. “You have grown up a strong, fine girl. But tell me what has brought you so far?”
“She came part of the way with our John,” said the old man. “He will soon follow.”
His wife was startled. She seemed to anticipate something, and reminded her husband that she had thought of the Josenhans children at the moment John rode away.
“I have a remembrance from both of you,” said Amrie, and took the necklace and a carefully folded gold piece from her pocket. “That necklace you gave me the last time you were in the place.”
“Ah, you told me you had lost it,” interrupted the farmer to his wife.
“And there,” continued Amrie, giving him the gilded groschen, “is the gold piece you presented me when I kept the geese upon Holder Common, and gave you water from the spring.”
“Yes, yes, that is all right,” said the old man. “But what is all this? What is given you, you may keep.”
Amrie stood up and said, “I have a request to make. Suffer me for two minutes to speak freely. May I?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Look! Your son John would have brought me to you as a servant. Formerly I would rather have served you than another, rather here than elsewhere; but now, it would have been dishonorable in me towards those to whom I wish to be open and honorable during my whole life long. I could not come with a lie in my mouth, when all should be as clear as sunlight. In one word, John and I have taken each other with our whole hearts’ choice, and he wishes me to be his wife!”