On Sunday afternoons, when everybody was out for a good time, Barefoot often used to stand quiet and motionless at the door of her house, looking out into the world and at the sky in dreamy, far-off meditation, wondering where Damie was now and how he was getting on.  And then she would stand and gaze for a long time at an overturned plow, or watch a fowl clawing in the sand.  When a vehicle passed through the village, she would look up and say, almost aloud: 

“They are driving to somebody.  On all the roads of the world there is nobody coming to me, and no one thinking of me.  And do I not belong here too?”

And then she would make believe to herself that she was expecting something, and her heart would beat faster, as if for somebody who was coming.  And involuntarily the old song rose to her lips: 

  All the brooklets in the wide world,
  They run their way to the Sea;
  But there’s no one in this wide world,
  Who can open my heart for me.

“I wish I were as old as you,” she once said to Black Marianne, after dreaming in this way.

“Be glad that a wish is but a word,” replied the old woman.  “When I was your age I was merry; and down there at the plaster-mill I weighed a hundred and thirty-two pounds.”

“But you are the same at one time as at another, while I am not at all—­even.”

“If one wants to be ‘even’ one had better cut one’s nose off, and then one’s face will be even all over.  You little simpleton!  Don’t fret your young years away, for nobody will give them back to you; and the old ones will come of their own accord.”

Black Marianne did not find it very difficult to comfort Barefoot; only when she was alone, did a strange anxiety come over her.  What did it mean?

A wonderful rumor was now pervading the village; for many days there had been talk of a wedding that was to be celebrated at Endringen, with such festivities as had not been seen in the country within the memory of man.  The eldest daughter of Dominic and Ameile—­whom we know, from Lehnhold—­was to marry a rich wood-merchant from the Murg Valley, and it was said that there would be such merry-making as had never yet been seen.

The day drew nearer and nearer.  Wherever two girls meet, they draw each other behind a hedge or into the hallway of a house, and there’s no end to their talking, though they declare emphatically that they are in a particular hurry.  It is said that everybody from the Oberland is coming, and everybody from the Murg Valley for a distance of sixty miles!  For it is a large family.  At the Town-hall pump, there the true gossiping goes on; but not a single girl will own to having a new dress, lest she should lose the pleasure of seeing the surprise and admiration of her companions, when the day arrived.  In the excitement of asking and answering questions, the duty of water-carrying is forgotten, and Barefoot, who arrives last, is the first to leave with her bucketful of water.  What is the dance to her?  And yet she feels as if she hears music everywhere.