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After the farewells were all said, Rico and Stineli went towards Sils together, while her mother, with all the little children clustered about her, stood upon the doorstep and looked after them. Sami accompanied them to carry the portmanteau on his head, and Rico carried the basket on one side, and Stineli held it on the other. Stineli's clothes had just filled it.
If they called out after him, "Now it is Rico's turn to be thrashed," he stood perfectly still and did nothing; but he looked at them so strangely with his dark eyes, that no one meddled with him. In Stineli's company he was always contented.
Can you realize what that means? We will separate it into blutsgers. If one gulden contains a hundred blutsgers, then six guldens will be equal to six times one hundred, quickly, quickly! Now, Rico, you are generally ready enough." "Six hundred blutsgers," said the lad softly, for he was quite overpowered with the magnitude of this sum as compared with Stineli's twelve blutsgers.
There she could see every thing round about, the sunny heights and the lake, and, stretched over all, the blue heavens. Suddenly she called out, "Come now, Rico; we will sing, sing for ever so long." So the lad seated himself by Stineli's side, and placed his fiddle in position, for he had, of course, brought that too, and began to play, and the children sang,
She believed, as did all the neighbors far and near, that the lad was dead; and she was thankful that nobody knew about the words he had said to her on that last evening. The next morning after this event was made known, Stineli's father went out to the thrashing-floor and picked himself out a stout stick.
If she only went out-of-doors for a few moments, he considered it a misfortune. He was obedient and quiet enough, however, when she stayed with him; and did every thing she bade him do, and did not tease his mother as before. And it seemed as if the nervous little fellow had less frequent attacks of pain since Stineli's arrival.
"Stineli made it up," replied Rico, very seriously. The students looked at each other at these words, and burst out again with laughter. "So Stineli made it up, did she? Then we must drink her health over it." Rico had to join in drinking the toast, and was nothing loath to drink to Stineli's health.
Then the poor child cried and sobbed pitifully. It seemed to the grandmother as if a heavy weight were lifted from her heart as she heard these words of Stineli's. She had given up Rico as lost; and had in secret believed that the child had fled from the unkind treatment he had received at home, and was lying somewhere in the water, or was lost in the woods. Now a new hope arose in her heart.
Menotti told me to say, that if Stineli got on well with her son, she would give her every month five gulden to send home to her family, if they cared for it; and I am sure that Stineli and Silvio will agree famously, just as sure as if I saw it with my own eyes now," added the lad. Pushing his plate to one side, Stineli's father put his cap on his head.
After this had gone on for three weeks or so, Stineli's grandmother called the girl into her bedroom one evening, and said, "My dear Stineli, I can very well understand that you cannot forget your friend Rico, but you must try to remember that it is God's will that he should be taken away; and that, as it is so, it is also the best thing for Rico, as we must try to think."
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