“Now you have only to make me fly!” she said to John, who was busy hitching the horse.  “I have ridden horseback with you, and now I am driving with you; there is nothing left for me to do but fly.” [The two lovers now started out again, and were supremely happy as they rode along, discussing all sorts of things.  They came upon an old woman by the road-side, and it gave Amrei a thrill of satisfaction she never before had felt to be able to throw out a pair of shoes to her.  John commended this charitable instinct in her, and then began to tell her all about his home.]

Was it by a tacit agreement, or was it due to the influence which the present time exerted upon them, that they spoke not a word of how their arrival at John’s house was to be arranged until toward noon, when they reached the outskirts of Zumarshofen?  Only when they began to meet people who knew John, and who saluted him with glances of wonder at his companion, did he declare to Amrei that he had thought of two ways in which the thing might best be done.  Either he would take Amrei to his sister, who lived a short distance further on—­one could see the steeple of her village peering up from behind a hill—­and then go home alone and explain everything, or else he would take Amrei home at once—­that is, she should get down half a mile before they got there, and enter the house alone in the character of a maid.

Amrei showed great cleverness in explaining what should guide them in this matter, and what might come of their adopting either of the two methods of procedure proposed by John.  If she stopped at his sister’s, she would first have to win over to her side a person who would not be the one with whom the final decision lay, and it might result in all kinds of complications, the end of which could not be foreseen.  And moreover, it would always be an unpleasant reflection, and there would be all sorts of remarks made about it—­as if she had not dared to go straight to the house.  The second plan seemed to her the better one; but it went against her very soul to enter the house by means of a deception.  His mother, to be sure, had promised years ago to take her into her service; but she did not want to go into her service now, and it would be almost like stealing to try to worm herself into favor with the old people in that way.  And furthermore in such a disguise she would be sure to do everything clumsily; she would not be able to be natural and straightforward, and if she had to place a chair for his father, she would be sure to overturn it, for she would always be thinking:  “You are doing this to deceive him.”  Moreover, even supposing all this could be done, how could she afterward appear before the servants, when they learned that their mistress had been obliged to smuggle herself into the house as a maid?  And she would not be able to speak a single word with John all the time.  She closed her explanation with the words: 

“I have told you this only because you wanted to hear my opinion, too, and if you talk anything over with me, I must speak out freely what is in my mind.  But I tell you, at the same time, whatever you wish, and whatever you tell me to do, I shall do it.  If you say it should be so, so it shall be.  I’ll obey you without objection, and whatever you lay upon me to do, that shall I do as best I can.”