United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And when Damie was sitting up in the wagon, and for the last time gave her his hand, for a long time she would not release it. And when at last he drove away, she called out after him with a loud voice: "'Sack and Ax' don't forget that!" He looked back, waved his hand to her, and then he was gone.
Little Barefoot was exceedingly annoyed to find that Damie, though no one knew why, had become the general butt of all the joking and teasing in the village. She took him sharply to task for it, and told him he ought not to tolerate it; but he retorted that she ought to speak to the people about it, and not to him, for he could not stand up against it.
"Very well," said Amrei, "tomorrow I will bring my bundle. But now I should like to take my bundle with me; give me a bottle of wine, and this meat I will wrap up and take to Marianne and my Damie." They let Amrei have her way; but old Farmer Rodel said to her secretly: "Give me back my sixpence I thought you were going to give it up."
Damie was exceedingly discontented at having been compelled to learn a miserable trade that was fit only for a cripple. He wanted to be a mason, and although Amrei was very much opposed to it, for she predicted that he would not keep at it, Black Marianne supported him in it.
And the sexton leaned over to the magistrate and said: "Why do you allow the Cinderella to make such an outcry? Ring for the gendarme and have him shut her up in the madhouse." But the magistrate only smiled, and explained that the community had rid itself of all burdens that could ever accrue to it through Damie by paying the greater part of his passage money.
"My Damie! My Damie!" she kept repeating to herself in great alarm. But it was day-time, and in the day-time people could not be burned to death in a fire. And sure enough, when they arrived at Hirlingen, the house was already in ashes.
The satisfaction arising from the feeling that she was sturdily and untiringly doing her duty, and acting as a Samaritan to Black Marianne and Damie, impressed an indelible cheerfulness on her countenance; in the whole house there was no one who could laugh so heartily as Barefoot.
Beside the road, in an orchard, stood Damie in the act of tying two piebalds, fine, handsome horses, to a tree; and oxen, bulls, and cows were all running about in confusion. They stopped the engine to let Barefoot get off, and with a cry of "God be praised that nothing has happened to you!" she hurried toward her brother.
Coaly Mathew took Damie to work with him at the kiln in the forest, where talebearers kept coming to Damie to tell him that he had only to begin a lawsuit; they declared that he could not be driven away, for he had not yet been received at any other place, and that this was always a tacit condition when any one gave up his right of settlement.
Sure enough, Amrei found Black Marianne there, and half an hour before quitting time she called Damie up out of the quarry. And here among the rocks a wedding feast was held, more merry than the one amid the noise and music. Damie was especially joyful, and Marianne, too, was unusually cheerful.
Word Of The Day