The old woman leant her head on her palm, murmuring, "What a misfortune!"
I had heard somewhere the story of the doctor who in default of the necessary things wrote his prescription on the door of the room with chalk. His example was worth following now; but there was no chalk to be found in the house. I didn't know what else to suggest, and was unspeakably ashamed of being a scribe without a pen.
"My boy," said the woman suddenly, "maybe you learned to write with charcoal too?"
Yes, yes—with the charcoal—just like that on the hearth there; that would do!
"And this, in God's name, must be my writing-paper," she went on, and lifted the lid of an old coffer standing near the stove. Inside the coffer I could see cuttings of cloth, a piece of linen, and a rusty spade. When she saw me looking at the spade, she looked sadly confused, covered her old face with her brown apron, muttering, "It's a real disgrace!"
I was stricken, for I took this to be a reproach for my having no writing things about me.
"I expect you'll be making fun of me," she said. "But don't you go and think badly of me—I can't do more than I do, I really couldn't do a thing more—I'm a fairly worn-out old body!"
Then I thought I understood: the poor old woman felt herself disgraced because she could no longer handle the spade, and it had therefore gone rusty. I looked about on the hearth for a bit of soft charcoal. The pine-tree was obliging, and lent me the pen wherewith to write out Frau Drachenbinder's will, or whatever it might prove to be.
Just when the grey coffer was opened and I standing there ready to take down her words, that they might deliver their message to her grandchild in the years to come, the old woman beside me uttered a loud cry. She turned away quickly, crowed again, and then broke into hoarse laughter.
In terror I broke the charcoal in my fingers and glanced askance at the door.