BERND
[Throws himself on the grass under the pear tree.] You'd better come an' sit down by me. An' if, maybe, you got your Testament with you, we might refresh ourselves with the Good Word.
AUGUST
[Sitting down exhausted and glad to be free.] All I say is: Thanks and praise be to the Lord.
BERND
D'you see, August, I said to you then: Let her be! The lass will find her own way! Now she's come to her senses! In the old days, before your time, often an' often I worried about her. A kind o' stubbornness used to come over her from time to time. An' 'twas always best to let her be!—Sometimes it seemed, as God lives, as if the lass was runnin' against a wall—a strong wall that nobody else couldn't see, an' as if she had to grope her way around it first.
AUGUST
What got into her that day … I'm thankin' God on my knees … but that day I didn't know what to make of it! Suddenly she—how that came about …? No, I can't see the rights of it to this day.
BERND
An' how different did she act this time when we went down to the magistrate.