But on the other side someone else had sprung on the carriage step and clamored for Erick’s attention.  He felt something under his nose from which came various odors.  It was an enormous bunch of fire-red and yellow flowers, which Kaetheli held out to him, who with one foot on the step was balancing over the colonel, and called to Erick:  “Here, Erick, you must take a nosegay from the garden with you, and when you come back, be sure you come and see us, do not forget.”

“Thank you, Kaetheli,” Erick called back, “I shall certainly come to see you, a year from now.  Good-bye, Kaetheli, good-bye, Churi!”

Both jumped down, and the horses started.

“Look, look, Grandfather,” cried Erick quickly, and pulled the grandfather in front of him, so that he could see better.  “Look, there is Marianne’s little house.  Do you see the small window?  There Mother always sat and sewed, and you see, close beside it stood the piano, where Mother sat the very last time and sang.”

The grandfather looked at the little window and he frowned as though he were in pain.

“What did your mother sing last, my boy?” he then asked.

     “I lay in heaviest fetters,
     Thou com’st and set’st me free;
     I stood in shame and sorrow,
     Thou callest me to Thee;
     And lift’st me up to honor
     And giv’st me heavenly joys
     Which cannot be diminished
     By earthly scorn and noise.”

When Erick had ended, the grandfather sat for a while quiet and lost in thought; then he said:  “Your mother must have found a treasure when in misery, which is worth more than all the good luck and possessions which she had lost.  The dear God sent that to her, and we will thank Him for it, my boy.  That, too, can make me happy again, else the sight of that little window would crush my heart forever.  But that your mother could sing like that, and that you, my boy, come into my home with me, that wipes away my suffering and makes me again a happy father.”

The grandfather took Erick’s hand lovingly in his, and so they drove toward the distant home.

***End of the project gutenberg EBOOK Erick and Sally***

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