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Damie declared that the parish ought to give him a handsome contribution; but his sister would not hear of it, saying that this ought to be the last resource, when everything else had failed. She did not explain what else she was going to try.
Damie, who had learned from Crappy Zachy to knit wool, now sat beneath the parental roof again; and at night, when the brother and sister were asleep in the garret, each one of them would wake the other when they heard Black Marianne down stairs, running to and fro and muttering to herself. But Damie's transmigration to Black Marianne's was the cause of new trouble.
"You must not!" cried Damie, throwing his arms around her and he was trembling all over. "Be still," said Amrei, to soothe him. "The kind woman will take you too. Damie is to go with us, is he not?" "No, child, that cannot be I have boys enough." "Then I'll not go either," said Amrei, and she took Damie by the hand.
"For you I unfortunately have nothing," said the good woman to Damie, who was breaking a switch he had in his hand into little pieces. "But I will send you a pair of leather breeches belonging to my John they are quite good still and you can wear them when you grow bigger. And now, God keep you, dear children. If possible, I shall come to you again, Amrei.
For herein lies the mysterious power of cooperation among men, that when we help others we are also helping ourselves. "We have four sound hands," she said in conclusion, "and we'll see if we cannot fight our way through the world together. And to fight your way through is a thousand times better than to beg your way through. And now, Damie, come with me come home."
There was a strange mixture of bitterness and benevolence in her uncle's reply: "Yes, you certainly take after your mother she would never have anything to do with us. But I couldn't take Damie alone along with me, even if he wanted to go; for a long time he wouldn't be able to do anything but eat bread, whereas you would have been able to earn it too."
She thought it terrible and sinful that Damie should talk so lightly here, where she felt as if she were in church, or even in eternity quite out of the world, and yet in the very midst of it. She herself opened the inside door; the room was dark as a grave, for the shutters were closed.
When Damie's first letter came from Bremen nobody had ever thought that he could write so properly then she exulted before the eyes of men, and read the letter aloud several times; but in secret she was sorry to have lost such a brother, probably forever. She reproached herself for not having put him forward enough, for it was now evident what a sharp lad Damie was, and so good too!
These visits, however, were soon discontinued, for Marianne once said: "I am nearly seventy years old and have got on until now without the friendship of a farmer; and it's not worth while to make a change now." Naturally enough Damie was often with his sister.
But when she examined his wardrobe, and with great difficulty induced Black Marianne to let her have on credit some of the old woman's heaped-up stores of linen, and when she began to cut out this linen and sat up at night making shirts of it all these steady and active preparations made Damie almost tremble.
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