Amrie nodded, and the children separated, each to go to the house where they had found shelter.
The fog that had been so great in the morning now came down in pouring rain. The great red umbrella of Madam Landfried moved here and there in the village, and the form that was under it could scarcely be seen. Mariann had not met her, and at coming home she said, “She can come to me—I shall not seek her again.”
The two children wandered out again, and sat down together upon the threshold of their parents’ house. They waited silently, and again the thought came to them, that their parents would never return to them. Dami would count how many drops fell from the roof. But they came all too quickly, and he shouted out at once, “A thousand million.”
“She must pass here as she goes home,” said Amrie, “and we will call to her. Only cry out at the same time with me, and then she will speak to us again.”
So said Amrie, for the children waited here only for the Landfried to pass.
A whip snapped in the village; they heard the quick step of a horse upon the road, and a carriage rolled by. Their friend sat within it.
“Our father and mother will come in a carriage to fetch us,” said Dami. Amrie cast a melancholy glance at her brother. “Do not chatter so,” she said. As she turned again, the wagon was close to them, and some one nodded from beneath the red umbrella. It rolled on, only Mathew’s dog barked after it, and made as though he would seize the spokes of the wheels with his teeth. At the fish-pond he turned back, barked once more, and then slipped into the house.
“Hurrah! she has gone,” cried Dami with triumph. “That was the Landfried. Did not you know Farmer Rodel’s black horse?”
“Don’t forget my leather trousers,” he shrieked with all the strength of his lungs, although the wagon had already vanished in the valley, and was creeping up the little height of the Holder Meadow. The children turned back silently to the village.
Who can tell how this bitter experience struck a tiny root into the inner being of a child, and what may hereafter spring from it? Other feelings may immediately overpower the consciousness of this heavy disappointment, but the bitter root has struck into the soul.