And she has children of her
own--one of them is called John."
Amrei was standing by the tree where they had picked the berries. She
laid her hand upon the trunk and said:
"You--why don't you go away, too? Why don't people tell you to emigrate?
Perhaps for you, too, it would be better elsewhere. But, to be sure, you
are too large--you did not place yourself here, and who knows if you
would not die in some other place. You can only be hewn down, not
transplanted. Nonsense! I also had to leave my home. If it were my
father, I should be obliged to go with him--he would not need to ask me.
And he who asks too much, goes astray. No one can advise me in this
matter, not even Marianne. And, after all, with my uncle, it's like
this: 'I am doing you a good turn, and you must repay me.' If he's
severe with me, and with Damie, because he's awkward, and we have to run
away, where in this wide, strange world are we to go? Here everybody
knows us, and every hedge, every tree has a familiar face. 'You know me,
don't you?' she said, looking up at the tree. 'Oh, if you could but
speak! God created you too--why cannot you speak? You knew my father and
mother so well--why cannot you tell me what they would advise me to do?'
Oh, dear father! Oh, dear mother! It grieves me so to have to go away! I
have nothing here, and hardly anybody, and yet I feel as if I were being
driven out of a warm bed into the cold snow.
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