"What--learn to write so finely and then come all this long way and
suffer cold the long night through and then in the end take nothing for
it--that would be fine indeed!" she cried. "Why, my boy, I couldn't
allow it!"
I glanced through the open door into the next room where the little
church stood. It certainly would be heavenly company for my little bed
at home. She guessed at once. "You're thinking of my little
house-altar!" she said. "Then, in God's name, you shall have it. I
can't shut it up in the chest--my dear little church--and the people
would only steal it from me when I'm gone. With you it will be
respected, I know, and you'll think of old Frau Drachenbinder in sacred
moments, when you're saying your prayers."
And she gave me the little church as it stood. And that was the
greatest bliss of all my childhood.
I dearly wanted to take it on my shoulders at once and carry it away
over the hills to my home. But she said, "You dear little goose, that's
impossible. When the man's back, he'll contrive something for you."
And sure enough, when the man was back again and had eaten the midday
meal with us, he knew what to do. He bound the little church on to my
back with a string, then stooped down in front of the wood block, and
said, "Now, boy, mount again!" So for the second time I got up on his
back, thrust my feet in his breeches pockets, and clung with my hands
round his neck. The old woman held the waking child so that it might
put out its little hand to me, uttered more thanks, and then dived
behind the stove and crowed as before.
I rode away from the place, and with every movement the saints in the
church kept tapping behind my back and the bells in the towers kept
tinkling.
When the man had climbed with me as far as the heights of the
Bürstling, and there again bound the snow-shoes fast to his feet, I
asked him why Frau Drachenbinder was continually screaming for joy and
laughing.
"That's not screaming nor yet laughing neither," said my horse; "Frau
Drachenbinder has a lot of suffering to bear. For some years she used
to have a sort of catch in the breath--such as you may get through a
chill or the like: she didn't take any notice of it, let it just go its
own way, and so, little by little, the barber says, that cramp-crowing
and cramp-laughing came on. Her inside just twists itself up together,
and when she gets excited the fits come on strong. She can hardly touch
any food, and she's face to face with death all the time."
I said nothing. I looked up at the snow-white heights, at the twilight
forests, and saw we were gradually climbing down towards my home in the
clear Sunday afternoon. I was thinking about the little church I had
got as a legacy--how I would set it up in the living-room and hold a
service in it, and how my father and mother would now no longer have to
trudge all that long way to the parish church.
My good horse trotted patiently on, and behind me all the way the
little bells in the towers kept on chiming. What were they saying?...
Old Frau Drachenbinder died soon after that.