Forgiveness -- Fiction; Guilt -- Fiction; Love -- Fiction
"Not pleased? You'll soon see. But I'm old, my child, and can't jump
about, the way you do. Look at the mountains over there. As long as
they've been standing there, no one has ever felt happier than I do.
I don't know what the Lord means by giving me so much happiness on
earth. He knows what He is doing and I accept it calmly and patiently.
When you came home to us again, I thought my cup of happiness was full,
but now I see there's more coming. Well, let what will come, I'm going
home again."
The mother was obliged to stop, but Hansei said:
"Yes, mother; you shall see something that you've never seen before in
all your life." He went into the room, returned with the sack of gold,
and opened it.
"Just look at that!" said he. "How it shines and sparkles. You can hold
it all in two hands, and yet there's enough there to buy a farm, with
house and fields and forests, and cattle and tools and everything."
"That's a great deal of money," said the mother. She laid her hand on
the gold, while her lips moved silently.
"Put your hand into it," urged Hansei. "Oh, how good it feels to stir
about in the gold that way."
The grandmother did not comply with his wish, but kept murmuring to
herself.
The child in the next room cried, and Hansei called out:
"The freeholder's daughter's awake. Good morning, freeholder's
daughter!" said he, while the two women went out to the child. Then he
took up the bag of gold, shook it, and said:
"Just listen; you never heard such music before."
The grandmother lifted the child out of the bed and said: "Hansei, just
do as I tell you, and put the gold in the warm crib of the innocent
child. That'll bless it, and no matter whose hands the gold may have
been in, that consecrates it and brings a blessing with it."
"Yes, mother; we can do that." Turning to Walpurga, he added: "Mother
always has such pretty notions. You know it'll do the gold good in the
warm nest. Yes," said he to the little child, "they've put lots of gold
in your cradle. We'll take one piece and have a hole drilled through
it, and you shall get it when you become confirmed. Only keep good."
"But now I must go over to Grubersepp's," said he, at last.
Walpurga was obliged to tell that she had already been looking for him
there, that morning. She now realized how prone she was to give way to
exaggerated fears, and determined to break herself of the habit.
The grandmother, Walpurga and the child were happy together at home,
and the mother related that just three months before Walpurga was born,
she had been at the farm for the last time, and that was to attend her
brother's wedding.
"They can bury me up there," added she. "It's a pity I can't rest
beside your father, for the lake never gave him up again. Oh if he'd
only lived to see this!"
Our highest joys and our deepest sorrows are closely allied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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