Amrei, why have you no shoes on? You might take cold in such weather as
this! Tell Marianne that Dame Landfried of Hochdorf told you to say, it
is not right of her to let you run about like this! But no--you needn't
say anything--I will speak to her myself. But, Amrei, you are a big girl
now, and must be sensible and look out for yourself. Just think--what
would your mother say, if she knew that you were running about barefoot
at this season of the year?"

The child looked at the speaker with wide-open eyes, as if to say:
"Doesn't my mother know anything about it?"

But the woman continued:

"That's the worst of it, that you poor children cannot know what
virtuous parents you had, and therefore older people must tell you.
Remember that you will give real, true happiness to your parents, when
they hear, yonder in heaven, how the people down here on earth are
saying 'The Josenhans children are models of all goodness--one can see
in them the blessing of honest parents.'"

The tears poured down the woman's cheeks as she spoke these last words.
The feeling of grief in her soul, arising from quite another cause,
burst out irresistibly at these words and thoughts; there was sorrow for
herself mingled with pity for others. She laid her hand upon the head of
the girl, who, when she saw the woman weeping, also began to weep
bitterly; she very likely felt that this was a good soul inclining
toward her, and a dawning consciousness began to steal over her that she
had really lost her parents.

Suddenly the woman's face seemed irradiated. She raised her still