Page - 82 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

The woman shuddered, her hand went to her heart, but she said quietly, “Are you worse again, Seppel? You’ve been sleeping so nicely.” He saw at once that her calmness was not genuine. “Don’t you fret, wife,” he said, “it must be so in this world. Wake the children up now, but gently, so that you don’t scare them.” The poor woman went to the bed of straw, and with trembling hand shook the bundle, and the little ones started up only half awake. “Anne, I beg you don’t pull the children about so,” the sick man reproached her, with a weaker voice, “and let little Martha sleep, she doesn’t understand things yet.” I remained seated by the table, and my heart burned within me. The little family gathered round the bed, sobbing aloud. “Quietly now,” said Sepp to the children; “mother will let you sleep all the longer to-morrow morning. Josefa, draw the shirt together over your breast or you will get cold.—Now then, children, you must always be brave and good and obedient to your mother, and when you are grown up you must stand by her and don’t leave her. All my days I’ve toiled and moiled, but for all that I’ve nothing else to leave you beyond this house, with the little garden and the ridge-acre with the stacks. If you want to divide it up, do so in a brotherly way; but it is better to keep the little property together, and keep the home going, somehow, and till the ground. Beyond that I make no will. I love you all alike. Don’t forget me, and now and then say an Our Father for me. And you four boys, I beg from my very heart, don’t start poaching—it leads to no good. Give me your hand on it. There, that’s right! If one of you would like to learn saw-sharpening— I have earned many a penny with it and the tools are all there. And then, as you know already, if you plant potatoes on the ridge- acre, you must do so in May. It’s quite true, what my father always used to say, ‘Of potatoes it is said: “Plant me in April, I come when I will; plant me in May, I’m there in a day.”’ Bear that saying in mind! There, now go to bed again, or you will catch cold; always take care of your health; health is everything. Go to sleep, children.” The sick man became silent and fell to plucking at his covering again. Turning to me the woman whispered, “I don’t like it, he’s talking too much.” When a very sick person becomes suddenly talkative that too is looked upon as a bad omen with us. Then he lay quite exhausted. The woman lit a death-taper. “Not yet, Anne, not yet,” he murmured, “a little later; but give me a drop of