Then the Farmer, bursting into laughter, said: 

“Just think, dame!  Here’s a girl from Haldenbrunn, and she has something to say to Farmer Landfried and his wife, but she won’t tell me what it is.  Now do you tell her what my name is.”

“Why, that’s the Farmer himself,” said the woman; and she welcomed the old man home by taking his hat from his head and hanging it up on a peg over the stove.

“Do you see now?” said the old man to Amrei, triumphantly.  “Now say what you like.”

“Won’t you sit down,” said the mother, pointing to a chair.

Amrei drew a deep breath and began: 

“You may believe me when I say that no child could have thought more about you than I have done, long ago, long before these last days.  Do you remember Josenhans, by the pond, where the road turns off to Endringen?”

“Surely, surely!” said the two old people.

“Well, I am Josenhans’s daughter!”

“Why, I thought I knew you!” exclaimed the old woman.  “God greet you!” She held out her hand to Amrei, and said:  “You have grown to be a strong, comely girl.  Now tell me what has brought you here.”

“She rode part of the way with our John,” the Farmer interposed.  “He’ll be here directly.”

The mother gave a start.  She had an inkling of something to come, and reminded her husband that, when John went away, she had thought of the Josenhans children.

“And I have a remembrance from both of you,” said Amrei, and she brought out the necklace and the piece of money wrapped in paper.  “You gave me that the last time you were in our village.”

“See there—­you lied to me, you told me that you had lost it,” cried the Farmer to his wife, reproachfully.

“And here,” continued Amrei, holding out to him the groschen in its paper cover; “here’s the piece of money you gave me when I was keeping geese on the Holderwasen, and gave you a drink from my jug.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all right!  But what does it all mean?  What you’ve had given you, you may keep,” said the Farmer.

Amrei stood up and said: 

“I have one thing to ask you.  Let me speak quite freely for a few minutes, may I?”

“Yes, why not?”

“Look—­your John wanted to take me with him and bring me here as a maid.  At any other time I would have been glad to serve in your house, indeed, rather than anywhere else.  But now it would have been dishonest; and to people to whom I want to be honest all my life long, I won’t come for the first time with a lie in my mouth.  Now everything must be as open as the day.  In a word, John and I love each other from the bottom of our hearts, and he wants to have me for his wife.”

“Oho!” cried the Farmer, and he stood up so quickly that one could easily see that his former helplessness had been only feigned.  “Oho!” he called out again, as if one of his horses were running away.