“Yes, that was always her wish,” said the old man. And now, that which, from fear of the orphan becoming a charge to them, he had denied his wife, during her life, he consented to now, when it could no longer be a pleasure to her; while he also gave himself the appearance of doing it out of regard to her memory. He did not consent from generosity, but from the well-founded expectation that the orphan would be serviceable to himself, while the charge of her remuneration would fall upon another.
The young people looked at each other, and the young farmer said,—
“Bring thy bundle to-morrow morning to our house; you can stay with us.”
“Good,” said Amrie; “to-morrow I will bring my bundle, but now may I not take a bundle away? Give me that flask of wine, and I will wrap up this fowl with it, and take it to Mariann and my Dami.”
They consented. Then the old farmer whispered to her, “Give me back my sixpence. I meant you should give it to them.”
“I take it from you as enlisting money,” said Amrie, slyly, “and you will soon see that I will quit scores with you.”
The old farmer smiled, although half angrily, and Amrie went gayly away with money, wine, and food, to poor Mariann and Dami.
The house was shut up, and presented to Amrie the greatest possible contrast between the music, noise, and feasting of the wedding-apartment, and the deserted stillness of her home. Upon her way home she knew where she could expect to find Mariann. She went, indeed, almost every evening to the stone quarry, and sat alone behind the hedge, quietly listening to the sound of the hammer and chisel. It was to her a melody out of long past time, when John had once worked here, and she had sat and listened to the sound of his pickaxe.
Amrie met Mariann just returning; and half an hour before the close of work she called Dami, and there, on the rocks, by the quarry, was held a wedding-feast merrier than that within the house at the sound of the fiddles.
Dami, especially, shouted loudly. Mariann was also cheerful, but she took no wine. “Not a drop of wine,” she said, “should pass her lips till she drank it at the wedding of her John.”