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It is no easy matter to enter a large family of that kind unless the way is paved with horses and wagons, and all sorts of furniture and money, and a number of relatives. Many wagons arrived that Sunday at Farmer Landfried's from the uplands and lowlands. There came driving up brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, and all their relations.
A little fortress of carriages stood in Farmer Landfried's courtyard, and in the house the entire large family was assembled. There they sat together in high water-boots, or in clouted laced-boots, and with three-cornered hats, some worn with the corner, others with the broadside forward.
All during the service the children kept glancing across at Farmer Landfried's wife, and when they came out they waited for her at the door; but the wealthy farmer's wife was surrounded by so many people, all eagerly talking to her, that she was obliged to keep turning in a circle to answer first one and then another.
I would have given you a letter to Farmer Landfried's wife in Allgau; and there you would have been treated like a son of the family." "Oh, don't talk to me about her!" said Damie crossly. "She has owed me a pair of leather breeches she promised me for nearly thirteen years. Don't you remember? when we were little, and thought we had only to knock, and mother and father would open the door.
The mother let herself be quieted. On the Saturday morning previous to the family gathering, Damie made his appearance; but he was immediately dispatched back to Haldenbrunn to procure all the necessary papers from the magistrate in the town-hall. The first Sunday was an anxious day at Farmer Landfried's. The old people had accepted Amrei, but how would it be with the rest of the family?
As in a sleep-dream, a subject that has been lightly touched upon is renewed and interwoven with all sorts of strange details, so was it now with Amrei in her waking-dream. Damie had made but a passing allusion to the meeting with Farmer Landfried's wife. The remembrance of her had half faded away; but now it suddenly rose up fresh again like a picture of past life in a vision.
She scraped together and turned into money whatever of her possessions she could lay hands on; even the valuable necklace she had received in the old days from Farmer Landfried's wife went its way to the widow of the old sexton, a worthy woman who supported herself in her widowhood by lending money at high interest on security; the ducat, too, which she had once thrown after Severin in the churchyard, was brought into requisition.
"John has a wife, and he brought her straight home without her parents, without a clergyman, and without the authorities having had a word to say in the matter. She must be a beauty that he found behind a hedge somewhere!" This is what all of them were saying. The horses on the wagons also suffered for what had happened at Farmer Landfried's.
And finally, when he had plucked all the berries, he said: "I shan't come down again, but shall stay up here day and night until I die and drop down, and shall never come to you at all any more, unless you promise me something!" "What is it?" "That you'll never wear the necklace that Farmer Landfried's wife gave you, so long as I can see it. Will you promise me that?" "No!"
It was the Sunday before All Souls' Day, and the children were again playing before the locked house of their parents, they seemed to love the spot, when Farmer Landfried's wife came down the road from Hochdorf, with a large red umbrella under her arm, and a hymn-book in her hand.
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