Willi re-entered her home trembling, trembling she stood in the dear old room. There lay her mother, deadly still, pale as marble; but Mother Patience had kissed her at the last, and that was why her white mouth smiled. Willi knelt by the bed, and her whole body shook with suppressed sobs.
The farmer stood leaning on his stick in the doorway; the tears ran down his face. He knew it, he had himself closed those eyes that had at last ceased from weeping. Then he went out, he could look no longer.
Sorrow was in the room; she laid her arm round Willi and murmured—
"My sister!"
Mother Patience was there too. She stroked Willi's locks and poured peace into her weary soul, so that at last she could bear to look at her dead mother, ay, could even touch the cold hands with her lips. Then Patience pointed the way to her father outside, to whom she remained as sole comfort and support. Ay, Willi was a strong soul. She began a hard, weary life with a broken heart and a weakened body. She had often need to call upon Mother Patience, when her strength was at an end, and her father, old and crabbed, demanded too much from her; when the farm-servants obeyed her reluctantly and morosely; when the villagers avoided her at the church door.
She became a mother to the poor, and quietly did more good than all the villagers together. Yet all were somewhat in awe of the grave, stern woman, who was never hard or angry, but never cheerful. She will not marry, least of all the man who brought her to shame and deserted her in her need; her property she will leave to the orphaned.
Yes, yes, Mother Patience, you can work miracles.
Footnotes
[1] ] A German idiom. A "raven mother" means a bad, unnatural mother.