uld the information be understood, which Erick and
Marianne--each relieving the other--gave about the whole occurrence.
Erick told how he, after a strong push, had fallen into the water and
then had known nothing more, and had wakened again when somebody was
rubbing him firmly. That had been Marianne, who now related further. She
had gone yesterday afternoon from Oakwood, where she was living now,
upward along the Woodbach, to the place where the berries grew the most
plentifully, as she knew these many years that she had sought and sold
them in the taverns of Upper and Lower Wood. As she was seeking for
berries close by the water, bending down behind the willow bush, she saw
how the bush was being shaken and how something had remained hanging to
it. She bent around the bush to find out what it might be, and saw the
black velvet jacket on the water! "Oh, dear God!" she then cried out
with unutterable horror, and never stopped crying until, under her
desperate rubbing with skirt and apron, Erick opened his eyes and looked
with surprise at Marianne. Now she quickly took the large market-basket
in which she intended to put the many small baskets, when they were
filled; threw the latter all in a heap, put the dripping Erick in it,
and carried him, as quickly as she could, toward her small cottage, far
beyond Oakwood, in which she lived together with her cousin. Here she at
once undressed the wet boy, wound him closely in a large blanket so that
nothing was to be seen of him besides a tuft of yellow, curly hair, put
him in bed with the heavy cover far above his head, for, "getting him
warm is the principal thing for the little boy," she kept on saying to
herself. Then she went into her kitchen and soon came back with a cup of
steaming hot milk, lifted Erick's head from under the covers, so that
his mouth became free, and poured the hot milk in it to make the little
fellow warm. When she now had packed him in the blanket again, and the
fright at finding the unconscious Erick and the fear of his taking cold
had passed a little, then it came into her mind that the people of the
parsonage did not know what had become of him, and that they too would
be anxious about him. She went again to the bed and tried to bring the
deeply hidden Erick up again. But Erick was already half asleep, and
when Marianne told him her thoughts, he said comfortingly: "No, no, they
will know that I will come back again, and if they are anxious, then
'Lize