At first this duty appealed to him as
sport, but he soon grew tired of it and gave it up.
It was a pleasant, but at the same time a laborious office that Amrei
had undertaken. And it often seemed especially hard to her that she
could do nothing to attach the creatures to her; indeed, they were
hardly to be distinguished from one another. And it was not at all an
idle remark that Black Marianne made to her one day when she returned
from Mossbrook Wood:
"Animals that live in flocks and herds," she said, "if you take each one
separately, are always stupid."
"I think so, too," replied Amrei. "These geese are stupid because they
know how to do too many different things. They can swim, and run, and
fly, but they are not really at home either in the water, or on land, or
in the air. That's what makes them stupid."
"I still maintain," replied Marianne, "that there's the making of an old
hermit in you."
The Holderwasen was not one of those lonely, sequestered spots which the
world of fiction seems to select for its gleaming, glittering legends.
Through the centre of the Holderwasen ran a road to Endringen, and not
far from it stood the many-colored boundary-stakes with the
coats-of-arms of the two sovereign princes whose dominions came together
here. In rustic vehicles of all kinds the peasants used to drive past,
and men, women, and children kept passing to and fro with hoe, scythe,
and sickle.
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