Parting had to come the next morning.  The mother took Erick in her arms and after she pressed him to her heart, she said:  “My dear Erick, never forget your mother’s song!  It has already brought you once from the wrong road into the right one; it will guide you well as long as you live.  Keep it in your heart, my Erick.”

When Erick noticed tears in the mother’s eyes, then his grew wet, and when Sally noticed that, she put both hands to her face and began to sob.  Then Erick ran to his grandfather and pleadingly cried:  “Oh, Grandfather, can we not take Sally along?  Don’t you think we could?”

The grandfather smiled and answered:  “I could not wish anything I should like better, my boy, but we cannot rob the parsonage of all its children, all at once.  But come, perhaps we can make some arrangement.  What does the mother think about it, if we were to take our little friend next summer and bring her back for the winter, and do so every year?”

“Yes, yes,” shouted Erick, “every, every year as long as we live!  Will you give me your word on it, Grandfather, now, right away?”

“To give you my word on it that it shall be so long as we live, that is asking much, my boy,” said the grandfather smiling.  “If now you, both of you, should wish, all at once, to have things different—­what then?”

“Oh, no, we are not so stupid,” said Erick, “are we, Sally?  Just you promise right away, Grandfather.”

The latter held out his hand to the mother and said:  “If it suits Mamma, then we both will promise, that it shall continue, as long as it pleases our children.”

The mother gave her hand on it, and now the two hands were pressed most heartily.

And the pastor said:  “So, so!  Agreements are made between the colonel and the parson’s wife behind my back, and I have nothing to do with it but say yes.  Well, then, I will say at once a firm yes and Amen.”

With these words he too shook his guest’s hand firmly and there remained only to take leave from Ritz and Edi, both of whom he heartily invited to Denmark, wherein Erick strongly supported him, adding:  “And you know, Edi, when you are in Denmark, then you can go on ships, and study there all about them.  That will be a good thing for your calling.”  For Erick had not forgotten that Edi intended to sail around the whole world, and that Ritz too wanted to be something on the sea.

The grandfather was already entering the travelling coach, when Erick was held back by ’Lizebeth; he had pressed into her hand a valuable paper, but she had put her apron to her eyes and had begun to sob aloud behind it, and now she was holding Erick and said:  “I think the Sir Grandfather, he means it well as far as he sees things; but that he takes the dear boy away from us,—­to take one’s little boy simply away—­”

“I will come back again, ’Lizebeth, every year when the storks return.  Therefore, good-bye, ’Lizebeth, until I come again.”