"After all," she said, complainingly, to Amrei, "you did a thoughtless
thing to come into the house in the way you did, so that we cannot go
and fetch you to the wedding. It was not good, not customary. If I could
only send you away for a short time, or else John, so that it would all
be more according to rule."
And to John she said plaintively:
"I hear already the talk there'll be if you marry in such a hurry.
People will say: 'Twice asked, the third time persuaded--that's the way
worthless people do it!'"
But she allowed herself to be pacified by both of them, and smiled when
John said:
"Mother, you have studied up everything, like a clergyman. Then tell me,
why should decent people refrain from doing something, simply because
indecent people use it as a cloak? Can any one say anything bad about
me?"
"No,--you have been a good lad all your life."
"Well, then let them have a little confidence in me now, and believe
that a thing may be good, even if it does not look so at first sight. I
have a right to ask that much of them. The way Amrei and I came together
was out of the usual order, to be sure, and the affair has gone on in
its own way from the very beginning. But it wasn't a bad way. Why, it's
like a miracle, if we look at it rightly. And what is it to us if people
refuse to believe in miracles nowadays, and prefer to find all sorts of
badness in these things? One must have courage and not ask the world's
opinion in everything.
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