But no--you needn't
say anything--I will speak to her myself. But, Amrei, you are a big girl
now, and must be sensible and look out for yourself. Just think--what
would your mother say, if she knew that you were running about barefoot
at this season of the year?"

The child looked at the speaker with wide-open eyes, as if to say:
"Doesn't my mother know anything about it?"

But the woman continued:

"That's the worst of it, that you poor children cannot know what
virtuous parents you had, and therefore older people must tell you.
Remember that you will give real, true happiness to your parents, when
they hear, yonder in heaven, how the people down here on earth are
saying 'The Josenhans children are models of all goodness--one can see
in them the blessing of honest parents.'"

The tears poured down the woman's cheeks as she spoke these last words.
The feeling of grief in her soul, arising from quite another cause,
burst out irresistibly at these words and thoughts; there was sorrow for
herself mingled with pity for others. She laid her hand upon the head of
the girl, who, when she saw the woman weeping, also began to weep
bitterly; she very likely felt that this was a good soul inclining
toward her, and a dawning consciousness began to steal over her that she
had really lost her parents.

Suddenly the woman's face seemed irradiated. She raised her still
tearful eyes to heaven, and said:

"Gracious God, Thou givest me the thought." Then, turning to the child,
she went on: "Listen--I will take you with me. My Lisbeth was just your
age when she was taken from me. Tell me, will you go with me to Allgau
and live with me?"

"Yes," replied Amrei, decidedly.

Then she felt herself nudged and seized from behind. "You must not!"
cried Damie, throwing his arms around her--and he was trembling all
over.

"Be still," said Amrei, to soothe him. "The kind woman will take you
too. Damie is to go with us, is he not?"

"No, child, that cannot be--I have boys enough."

"Then I'll not go either," said Amrei, and she took Damie by the hand.

There is a kind of shudder, wherein a fever and a chill seem to be
quarreling--the joy of doing something and the fear of doing it. One of
these peculiar shudders passed through the strange woman, and she looked
down upon the child with a certain sense of relief. In a moment of
sympathy, urged on by a pure impulse to do a kind deed, she had proposed
to undertake a task and to assume a r