ready to weep;
but here again she quickly made use of the power which enabled her to
ignore insult and injury. Suppressing her tears, she seized her apron by
the two ends and danced around by herself so gracefully and prettily,
that all the children stopped to look at her. And presently the grown-up
people were nodding to one another, and a circle of men and women was
formed around Amrei. Farmer Rodel, in particular, who on this day was
eating and drinking with double relish, snapped his fingers and whistled
the waltz the musicians were playing, while Amrei went on dancing and
seemed to know no weariness. When at last the music ceased, Farmer Rodel
took Amrei by the hand and said:

"You clever girl, who taught you to do that so well?"

"Nobody."

"Why don't you dance with any one?"

"It is better to dance alone--then one does not have to wait for
anybody, and has one's partner always at hand."

"Have you had anything from the wedding yet?" asked Farmer Rodel, with a
complacent smile.

"No."

"Then come in and eat," said the proud farmer; and he led the poor girl
into the house and sat her down at the wedding table, at which feasting
was going on all day long. 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 kind