Then Moni came back directly to his wondering grandmother, and while
they sat together at their supper, he told her the whole story from the
very beginning about his three days so full of trouble, and the happy
ending to-day.
The grandmother listened very quietly and attentively and when he came
to the end, she said earnestly:
"Moni, you must remember what has happened to you now, as long as you
live! While you were having so great trouble with wrong-doing in order
to help the little creature, the dear Lord had already found a way to
help it and make you happy as soon as you would do what was right in His
sight. If you had done right at once, and trusted in God, all would have
gone well at first. Now the dear Lord has helped you beyond all you
deserved, so that you will not forget it your whole life long."
"No, I will surely never forget it," said Moni, eagerly assenting, "and
will always truly think, the first thing: I must only do what is right
before the dear Lord. He will take care of all the rest."
But before Moni could lie down to sleep, he had to look into the shed
once more, to see if it were really possible that the little kid was
lying out there and belonged to him.
Joergli received the ten francs according to the agreement, but he was
not allowed to escape from the affair so easily as that. When he
returned to the Bath House, he was brought to the landlord who took the
boy by the collar, gave him a good shaking, and said threateningly:
"Joergli! Joergli! Don't you try a second time to bring my whole house
into bad repute! If anything like this happens a single time again, you
will come out of my house in a way that will not please you! See, up
there hangs a very sharp willow rod for such cases. Now go and think
this over."
Moreover, the event had other consequences for the boy. From this time
on, if anything was lost anywhere in the Bath House, all the servants
immediately exclaimed: "Joergli from Kueblis has it!" and if he came
afterwards into the house they all pounced on him together and cried:
"Give it here, Joergli! Out with it!" And if he assured them he had
nothing and knew nothing about it, they would all exclaim: "We know
you already!" and "You can't fool us!"
So Joergli had to endure the most menacing attacks continually, and had
hardly a moment's peace any more, for if he saw any one approaching him,
he at once thought he was coming to ask if he had found this or that.
So Joergli was not at all happy; and a hundred times he thought: "If only
I had given back that cross immediately! I will never in my whole life
keep anything else that doesn't belong to me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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