It was soon done.  That very noon Amrei drove the geese out to the Holderwasen, as the pasture on the little hill by the King’s Well was called.  Damie loyally helped his sister in doing it.

Black Marianne, however, was very much put out about this new service, and declared, not without reason: 

“It’s something that’s remembered against a person an entire lifetime to have had such a place.  People never forget it, and always refer to it; and later on every one will think twice about taking you into their service, because they will say:  ‘Why, that’s the goose-girl!’ And if any one does take you, out of compassion, you’ll get low wages and bad treatment, and they’ll always say:  ’Oh, that’s good enough for a goose-girl.’”

“I won’t mind that,” replied Amrei; “and you have told me hundreds of times about how a goose-girl became a queen.”

“That was in olden times.  But who knows?—­you belong to the old world.  Sometimes it seems to me that you are not a child at all, and who knows, you old-fashioned soul, if a wonder won’t happen in your case?”

This hint that she had not yet stood upon the lowest round of the ladder of honor, but that there was a possibility of her descending even lower that she was, startled Amrei.  For herself she thought nothing of it, but from that time forth she would not allow Damie to keep the geese with her.  He was a man—­or was to be one—­and it might do him harm if it were said of him, later on, that he had kept geese.  But, to save her soul, she could not make this clear to him, and he refused to listen to her.  For it is always thus; at the point where mutual understanding ends, vexation begins; the inward helplessness translates itself into a feeling of outward injustice and injury.

Amrei, nevertheless, was almost glad that Damie could remain angry with her for so many days; for it showed that he was learning how to stand up against the world and to assert his own will.

Damie, however, soon got a place for himself.  He was employed by his guardian, Farmer Rodel, in the capacity of scarecrow, an occupation which required him to swing a rattle in the farmer’s orchard all day long, for the purpose of frightening the sparrows away from the early cherries and vegetable-beds.  At first this duty appealed to him as sport, but he soon grew tired of it and gave it up.

It was a pleasant, but at the same time a laborious office that Amrei had undertaken.  And it often seemed especially hard to her that she could do nothing to attach the creatures to her; indeed, they were hardly to be distinguished from one another.  And it was not at all an idle remark that Black Marianne made to her one day when she returned from Mossbrook Wood: 

“Animals that live in flocks and herds,” she said, “if you take each one separately, are always stupid.”

“I think so, too,” replied Amrei.  “These geese are stupid because they know how to do too many different things.  They can swim, and run, and fly, but they are not really at home either in the water, or on land, or in the air.  That’s what makes them stupid.”