Amrei did not eat much. Farmer Rodel, for a
jest, wanted to make the child tipsy, but Amrei said bravely:
"If I drink more, I shall have to be led and shall not be able to walk
alone; and Marianne says 'alone' is the best conveyance, for then the
horses are always harnessed."
All were astonished at the child's wisdom.
Young Farmer Rodel came in with his wife and asked the child, to tease
her:
"Have you brought us a wedding present? For if one eats so, one ought to
bring a wedding present."
The father-in-law, moved by an incomprehensible impulse of generosity,
secretly slipped a sixpenny piece into the child's hand. Amrei held the
coin fast in her palm, nodded to the old man, and said to the young
couple:
"I have the promise and an earnest of payment; your deceased mother
always promised me that I should serve her, and that no one else should
be nurse to her first grand-child."
"Yes, my wife always wished it," said the old farmer approvingly. And
what he had refused to do for his wife while she was alive, for fear of
having to provide for an orphan, he now did, now that he could no longer
please her with it, in order to make it appear before the people that
he was doing it out of respect for her memory. But even now he did it
not from kindness, but in the correct calculation that the orphan would
be serviceable to him, the deposed farmer who was her guardian; and the
burden of her maintenance, which would amount to more than her wages,
would fall on others and not on him.
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