"You are right," said Markus. "It is not well to hear nothing but sighs."
Marjon softly tuned her guitar; and while the husband sat beside the brick stove, smoking his pipe, and the wife laid her little one in bed, the two children began to sing a song—the last of those they had made together. It was a melancholy little song, as were all those they had sung during the last weeks. These were the words:
"If I should say what makes me sad,
My effort would be all in vain;
But nightingales and roses glad
They whisper it in sweet refrain.
"The evening zephyr softly sighs
In strains one clearly understands;
I see it traced high o'er the skies
In writing made by mystic hands.
"I know a land where every grief
Is changed into a mellow song;
Where roses heal with blushing lips
All wounds and every aching wrong.
"That land, though not so far away,
I may not, cannot enter there;
It is not here where now I stay
And no one saves me from despair."
"Is that Dutch, now?" asked the miner. "I can't understand a bit of it? Can you, wife?"
Weeping, the wife shook her head.
"Then what are you snivelling for, if you don't understand?"
"I don't understand it at all; but it makes me cry, and that does me good," said the wife.
"All right, then! If it does you good we'll have it once more." And the children sang it over again.
When they went away, they left the family in a more peaceful mood.