“How do you mean that? You will not go with me?”
Amrie was frightened. She now thought of what she had said. And indeed it might be taken as consenting; but she immediately answered,—
“No, of other things I know nothing now. I only meant that I would not go out of this house till I had seen every thing again. Come, Dami, thou art my brother. Come with me to the garret; you know where we used to play hide, behind the chimney. And then we will look out of the window where we dried the mushrooms. Don’t you remember the beautiful gold piece father received for them?”
Something shook and rolled over the ceiling. All three were frightened. But the uncle quickly said, “Stay here, Dami; and you also, Amrie. Why would you go up there? Do you not hear how the mice rattle?”
“Come with me,” urged Amrie; “they will not eat us.” But Dami declared he would not go, and though Amrie was secretly afraid, she took heart and went up alone to the garret. She soon came back as pale as death, and had nothing in her hand but a basket of straw.
“Dami will go with me to America,” said the uncle, as she entered again. She was breaking up the straw in her hand. “I have nothing against it. I do not know what I shall do; but he can go alone,” she said.
“No!” cried Dami, “that I will not. Thou didst not go with Madame Landfried, when she would have thee; and so I will not go alone; but with thee!”
“Now, then, think of it; you are sensible enough to do so,” concluded the uncle, bolting again the window-shutters, so that they stood in the darkness. He pressed the children to the door, and then out of the house; locked the house door, and went to Mathew’s with the key, and then with Dami alone, into the village. He called out from a distance to Amrie, “You can have till the morning, early, to decide. Then I shall go, whether you go with me or not.”
Amrie was alone. She looked after him as he went on, and it seemed strange to her that one man could go away from another, if that other belonged to him. There he goes, she thought, yet he belongs to thee, and thou to him.
Strange! as it sometimes happens in dreams that come we know not how. So it now seemed to Amrie in her waking dream. Wholly accidentally, had Dami spoken of her meeting with Madame Landfried.