"But to those who can jump like colts one doesn"t say such things,"
replied Amrei, laughing.
"You are rich," said the old man. He seemed to like to talk, and smiled as he took a pinch of snuff out of his horn snuff-box.
"How can you tell that I am rich?"
"Your teeth are worth ten thousand guilders. There"s many a one would give ten thousand guilders to have them in his mouth."
"I have no time for jesting. Now, G.o.d keep you!"
"Wait a little. I"ll go with you--but you must not walk too fast." Amrei carefully helped the old man to his feet, and he remarked:
"You are strong,"--and in his teasing way he made himself more helpless and heavier than he actually was. As they walked along, he asked:
"To whom are you going at the farm?"
"To the farmer and his wife."
"What do you want of them?"
"That I shall tell them."
"Well, if you want anything of them, you had better turn back at once.
The mistress would give you something, but she has no authority to, and the farmer, he"s tight--he"s got a board on his neck, and a stiff thumb into the bargain."
"I don"t want anything given me--I bring them something," said Amrei.
On the way they met an older man going to the field with his scythe; and the old farmer walking with Amrei called out to him with a queer blink in his eyes:
"Do you know if miserly Farmer Landfried is at home?"
"I think so, but I don"t know," answered the man with the scythe, and he turned away into the field.
There was a peculiar twitching in his face. And now, as he walked along, his shoulders seemed to Amrei to be shaking up and down; he was evidently laughing. Amrei looked at her companion"s face and saw the roguery in it. Suddenly she recognized in the withered features the face of the man to whom she had given a jug of water, years ago, on the Holderwasen. Snapping her fingers softly, she said to herself:
"Stop! Now I know!" And then she added aloud: "It"s wrong of you to speak in that way of the Farmer to a stranger like me, whom you don"t know, and who might be a relative of his. And I"m sure it is not true what you say. They do say, to be sure, that the Farmer is tight; but when you come right down to it, I dare say he has an honest heart, and simply doesn"t like to make an outcry about it when he does a good deed.
And a man who has such good children as his are said to be, must be a good man himself. And perhaps he likes to make himself out bad before the world, simply because he doesn"t care what others think of him; and I don"t think the worse of him for that."
"You have not left your tongue behind you. Where do you come from?"
"Not from this neighborhood--from the Black Forest."
"What"s the name of the place?"
"Haldenbrunn."
"Oh! Have you come all the way from there on foot?"
"No, somebody let me ride with him. He"s the son of the Farmer yonder--a good, honest man."
"Ah, at his age I should have let you ride with me too!"
They had now come to the farm, and the old man went with Amrei into the room and cried:
"Mother, where are you?"
The wife came out of another room, and Amrei"s hands trembled; she would gladly have fallen upon her neck--but she could not--she dared not.
Then the Farmer, bursting into laughter, said:
"Just think, dame! Here"s a girl from Haldenbrunn, and she has something to say to Farmer Landfried and his wife, but she won"t tell me what it is. Now do you tell her what my name is."
"Why, that"s the Farmer himself," said the woman; and she welcomed the old man home by taking his hat from his head and hanging it up on a peg over the stove.
"Do you see now?" said the old man to Amrei, triumphantly. "Now say what you like."
"Won"t you sit down," said the mother, pointing to a chair.
Amrei drew a deep breath and began:
"You may believe me when I say that no child could have thought more about you than I have done, long ago, long before these last days. Do you remember Josenhans, by the pond, where the road turns off to Endringen?"
"Surely, surely!" said the two old people.
"Well, I am Josenhans"s daughter!"
"Why, I thought I knew you!" exclaimed the old woman. "G.o.d greet you!"
She held out her hand to Amrei, and said: "You have grown to be a strong, comely girl. Now tell me what has brought you here."
"She rode part of the way with our John," the Farmer interposed. "He"ll be here directly."
The mother gave a start. She had an inkling of something to come, and reminded her husband that, when John went away, she had thought of the Josenhans children.
"And I have a remembrance from both of you," said Amrei, and she brought out the necklace and the piece of money wrapped in paper. "You gave me that the last time you were in our village."
"See there--you lied to me, you told me that you had lost it," cried the Farmer to his wife, reproachfully.
"And here," continued Amrei, holding out to him the groschen in its paper cover; "here"s the piece of money you gave me when I was keeping geese on the Holderwasen, and gave you a drink from my jug."
"Yes, yes, that"s all right! But what does it all mean? What you"ve had given you, you may keep," said the Farmer.
Amrei stood up and said:
"I have one thing to ask you. Let me speak quite freely for a few minutes, may I?"
"Yes, why not?"
"Look--your John wanted to take me with him and bring me here as a maid.