The arms of the sturdy ten-year-old quivered with joy. Frau Rauchfuss felt her child's delight in life. It went keenly to her heart, and she pressed the little girl closely to her. "Ah, if God would only grant, dear, that everything might go on just as it is!"
They came to the other side of the wood which lies like a broad band across the slope of the Ettersberg, where there was a very old wayside shrine without a saint. The saints had been too long exposed to the weather and to the onslaughts of Protestantism, and were worn away, broken, and vanished. Nothing was to be seen but a dilapidated low wall, on which the sorrowful Mother of God had once stood. Fran Rauchfuss sat down wearily on it and lifted her child to her lap. Together they looked out silently over the world which is closed to the people of Weimar, the world that lies behind the Ettersberg, a sunshiny, grain-bearing landscape, over which lay the last warm, lingering rays of the evening sun.
"What's the matter, mother? You're so quiet!"
"This time yesterday I had to carry you to bed because you had drunk too much." The child hid her face in her mother's neck. "Other children," she went on calmly, "while they are young, have a mother to watch over them. The time will come when you will have none. Other children have a father who helps them and advises them. That your father cannot do. Presently you will be quite alone, and will have to help yourself in every difficulty, and at the same time to look after your father and see that nothing happens to him."
The child raised her head and looked at her mother with astonishment. "You will be all alone; you must learn to think now what is right and wrong." Tears sprang to the eyes of the frightened child. The mother's eyes were as moist as the little girl's; and they gazed at each other with sad, uncertain faces. Frau Rauchfuss let her head fall on the soft, yielding shoulder of her child, and a mighty sob tore itself loose from her laden heart. The loving fair-haired child stroked her mother's face and pressed more closely to her.
"I am ill, my darling--I cannot live very much longer; and I'm so worried I don't know what to do, because I must leave you alone with your father. No one will look after you."
A sort of convulsion passed through the child's body, which the mother felt in the clinging arms. Then the little thing let go of her, and took the edge of her apron and passed it gently across her mother's eyes. "Don't cry," she said--"I shall be all right." Frau Rauchfuss looked down into a pair of earnest and determined eyes. "Put your head down on my shoulder again, and don't worry," said the child. The mother's heart was wonderfully lightened; she felt that she had with her a noble little being who could bring her comfort.
"If you die," said the child gravely, "will they put you in a coffin and carry you away and put you in the ground and cover you all up with earth?"
"Yes," said the mother.
"Won't you ever be able to come back?"