“Let him cry,” said Mariann, sadly smiling; “he brings you nothing. Oh, what creatures we are. How must every one of us seek to crack the hard nut of life; and at last lay it aside unopened! I will tell you, Amrie, what is the matter with you. You are dying with love! Be merry! With how few is it so well; how few are so happy as to cherish a true, real love! Take an example from me. Let hope never die! Do you know who within a living body is already dead? He who does not every morning, especially in every spring, think, ‘Now, life first begins with me; now, something comes which has never happened before.’ You must yet be happy; you do unconsciously the work of the righteous. What have you not done for your brother, for me, for Farmer Rodel, for every one? But it is well that you do not know the good you do. He who does good, and is always praying and thinking of it, and builds a future upon it, will pray himself right through heaven, and perhaps on the other side will keep the geese.”
“That I have done here,” said Amrie, laughing. “I am quit of it there.”
“An inward voice tells me,” continued the old woman, “that he who danced with you was no other than my John. And I will now say to you, that if he is not already married, he must marry you. He would always willingly have worn velvet clothes. I think he is now waiting about the frontiers till our present King dies, and then he will come home. How wrong of him that he does not let me know, when I have such a longing for him!”
Barefoot shuddered at the undying hope of poor Mariann, and the tenacity with which she forever clung to it. Henceforth, she never mentioned the stranger, but when from any cause she spoke of hope or of return, she instantly named Dami, although, secretly, she thought of the stranger. “He was not beyond the sea, and could come again or write to her—but alas, he had not even asked where she dwelt. How many thousand cities and villages, and solitary farms there are in the world! Perhaps he is now seeking thee, and can never find thee. But no—he could ask in Endringen. How easily could he ask Dominic or Amelia, and they could give him any information he sought. But I—I know not where he is. I can do nothing!”
It was again spring, and Amrie stood by her flowers in the window, when a bee came flying to the plants, and sucked from the open calix.
“Ah! so it is,” thought Amrie, “a woman is like a plant,—rooted in one place,—she cannot go and seek,—she must wait, and wait to be sought.”
“Were I a little bird
With wings so downy soft,
To thee, I’d fly, my love,
To thee, I’d fly full oft.