“Oh! do not be so tender-hearted,” said Barefoot. “What have I said against your good fortune? You remind me of the time when the geese bit you. I will only say, keep to that which thou hast, and take care that you remain in one place. It will not do to be like the cuckoo, and sleep every night upon a different tree. I could have another place. But I will not change. I have succeeded in making this one comfortable. Look,—he who is every minute changing, is treated like a stranger. They do not make him a home, because they know that to-morrow morning he will be gone.”
“I do not need your sermons,” said Dami, turning angrily away. “To me you are always harsh, but to all the rest of the world gentle.”
“Because you are my brother,” said Amrie laughing; and now she coaxed the obstinate boy.
There was, indeed, a strange difference between the brother and sister. Dami was sometimes humble as a beggar, and then suddenly proud, while Barefoot, though always good-natured and obliging, was sustained by an inward pride, that with all her readiness to serve, she never laid aside.
She succeeded in pacifying her brother, and said,—
“Look, something has just occurred to me; but you must first promise to be good, for upon a bad heart that coat must not lie. Farmer Rodel has yet the clothes of our father. You are so large, that they will just suit, and give you a respectable appearance when you enter the farm-yard with the other servants; they will see that you have had honest parents.”
Dami was consoled, and in spite of many obstacles, for old Rodel would not at first give up the clothes, Barefoot brought him at length to comply. Then she took Dami into her own chamber, where he must immediately put on the coat and waistcoat. He struggled against it, but what she had once decided upon must be done! The hat only, he would not have, but when the coat was on, she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said,—
“So, now thou art my brother and my father—and now the coat goes, as at first, over the field; but there is a new man within it. See, Dami! Thou hast the noblest Sunday dress in the world. Hold it in honor. Be therein as honest as was our blessed father!”
She could say no more, but laying her head upon the shoulder of her brother, her tears fell upon the newly recovered dress of the father.
“You say that I am tender-hearted,” complained Dami—“but you are far more so.”