Consequently
Amrei made up her mind to release herself from this uncanny position of
being alone with Black Marianne; she demanded that Damie should be taken
into the house. At first Marianne opposed it vehemently, but when Amrei
threatened to leave the house herself, and then coaxed her in such a
childlike way and tried so hard to do whatever would best please her,
the old woman at last consented.
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. 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. She would have liked to make all the young lads masons, and then to
have sent them out on their travels that they might bring back news of
her John.
Black Marianne seldom went to church, but she always liked to have
anybody else borrow her hymn-book and take it to church--it seemed to
give her a kind of pleasure to have it there.
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