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The old women, who sat near Barefoot, were loud in their praises of the English woman, and stood up a long time before she came when they saw her approaching to speak a few words to them. When Agy had gone away, the rejoicing, singing, dancing, stamping, and shouting broke out again with renewed vigor. Farmer Rodel's foreman now came toward Amrei, and she felt a thrill of expectation.
But hardly a year had passed, and Damie had not yet worked a full year in the quarry, when the celebration of a double wedding was announced in the village; for Farmer Rodel's eldest daughter and his only son were to be married on the same day.
But scarcely had Severin turned his back when she called out to him, half-aloud: "I won't take any presents!" and she flung the ducat after him. Several people who had seen this came up to Amrei and scolded her; and just as they were about to illuse her, she was again saved from their rough hands by Farmer Rodel's wife, who once before had protected her with words.
She had no opportunity to notice the wistful glances of the children and their continual nodding. Dame Landfried had Rosie, Farmer Rodel's youngest daughter, in her hand. Rosie was a year older than Amrei, who involuntarily kept moving her hand, as though she would have pushed aside the intruder who was taking her place.
It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the udders of the cows belonging to persons she hated, and that she had an especial grudge against Farmer Rodel's cattle.
This mystery was soon cleared up, when Farmer Rodel's wife came, and with her, Black Marianne; for Dame Rodel said: "Harkye, husband to my mind this thing should not be done so fast, this sending the children off to America with that man." "But he is their only living relative, Josenhans' brother." "Yes, to be sure.
"We must go to school," said Amrei, and she turned quickly with her brother through the garden-path back into the village. As they passed Farmer Rodel's barn, Damie said: "They've threshed a great deal at our guardian's today." And he pointed to the bands of threshed sheaves that hung over the half-door of the barn, as evidence of accomplished work. Amrei nodded silently.
Nearly the whole day John sat in the room with Rose, who was making a man's shirt. Toward evening Mistress Rodel's parents came, along with other relatives. It must be decided one way or the other today. The roast was sputtering in the kitchen, the pine wood cracking and snapping, and Barefoot's cheeks were glowing, heated by the fire on the hearth and the fire that was burning within her.
The heaviness of life is generally felt in later years, when one friend after another has been called away, and only a name and a memory remains. But it was Amrei's lot to experience this in her youth; and it was she and Black Marianne who wept more bitterly than any of the others at the funeral of Farmer Rodel's wife.
On the evening of the same day that John had ridden away from Zumarshofen, Crappy Zachy came to Farmer Rodel's house and sat with the proprietor in the back room for a long time, reading a letter to him in a low voice. "You must give me a hundred crowns if I put this business through, and I want that down in writing," said Crappy Zachy.
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