There is sometimes in the soul an emotion where fever and frost contend. It has been so with the stranger, and now she looked upon the child with a species of relief. Through strong emotion, and influenced by the purest benevolence, she would have undertaken a duty whose significance and difficulty she had not sufficiently considered; and especially as she did not know how her husband would take it. Now, as the child herself refused, there intervened a sufficient reason; all was clear again, and she turned quickly from the duty. She had satisfied her heart by proposing it, and now that the objection came not from herself, she had a kind of satisfaction in having offered, without herself taking back her word.
“As you please,” said the stranger; “I will not urge you. Who knows? perhaps it would be better that you should grow up first. It is well to learn to suffer in youth; the good comes easier after we have learnt the evil. Be only honest and good, and never forget that, on account of your parents, as long as God spares my life you shall have a shelter with me. Remember, if it does not go well with you, that you are not left alone in the world. Think of the wife of Farmer Landfried, in Zusmarshofen, in Allgäu. A word more. Don’t say in the village that I would have taken you. It is the way with people—they would blame you because you did not go—but it is as well so. Wait, I will give you something to remember me by.” She sought in her pocket, then suddenly putting her hand to her neck she drew out a five stringed garnet necklace, to which there was fastened a Swedish ducat, and, throwing the ornament over the neck of the child, she kissed her. Amrie looked as one enchanted upon all these proceedings. “For thee, alas! I have nothing,” she said to Dami, who stood with a little switch in his hand which he continued to break into small pieces; “but I will send you a pair of leather trousers of my John’s—they are not entirely new, but you can wear them when you are taller. Now God protect you, dear children! If it is possible I will come to see you again, Amrie. In the mean time send Mariann to me in the church. Remember always to be good, pray constantly for your parents, and never forget that you have a protector in heaven and also upon earth.”
For convenience in walking she had turned up her outer garment; now, at the entrance of the village, she let it down and went on with quick steps without once turning back.
Amrie kept her face bent down in order to see the keepsake upon her neck, but the necklace was too short. Dami was chewing the last piece of his stick when his sister, observing tears in his eyes, said, “We shall see—you will have the most beautiful pair of trousers in the village.”
“I will not take them,” said Dami, and spit out the last piece of stick.
“And I will ask her to give you a knife. I will stay at home the whole day; perhaps she will come to us.”
“Yes! if she were there already,” said Dami, without knowing what he said. His anger, and the feeling of being rejected, had excited these suspicious reproaches.
At the first stroke of the bell they hastened back to the village. Amrie gave over, with few words, her new ornament into the hands of Mariann, who said, “Thou art fortune’s child! I will take good care of it. Now hasten to the church.”
During the service both children looked constantly at their new friend, and when it was over they waited for her at the door of the church; but the respectable matron was so surrounded by men and women, all claiming her notice, that she could only turn in the circle to answer, sometimes here, sometimes there; thus for the waiting glances of the children she found no attention. She held Rose, the youngest daughter of Farmer Rodel, by the hand. She was a year older than Amrie, and thrust herself constantly before the latter, as though pressingly to take her place by the matron. Had, then, the respectable matron eyes only for Amrie by the last house in the solitude of the village, but in the midst of the people she did not know her? Amrie was frightened, when this thought just dawning in her mind was spoken aloud by Dami; but while she, with her brother, followed at a distance the great crowd that surrounded the matron, she gave utterance herself to the same thought. The matron vanished at last into the house of Farmer Rodel, and the children turned quietly back.
“When she comes,” said Dami, “tell her that she must go to Krappenzacher and tell him that he must treat me better.”