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ribbons are mostly red and wave in the breeze——when their wearers bluster
as they should——like flags. The rose or bud-shaped favours are generally
cut out of coloured linen or paper and have the advantage of always keeping
bright and fresh and not drooping, as real flowers do;—for a drooping air
won’t do for recruits. Only, there is just one green sprig of rosemary with it,
forming the heart of the favour; and in this green spray the beloved talks to
her lover, saying I know not what sweet and good things! So long as the
beloved has to do with rosemary, it is the May-time of love.
Now where was I to get my favour from? A sweetheart! I knew of one, but
I had none: I had never reflected how indispensable the sweetheart is to the
recruit.
Must I, while all the others marched away with fluttering top-knots, trot
favourless behind? And what was the good of marching and what the good of
going for a soldier, if I left no sobbing girl behind me?
The day arrived.
My mother made as if she were calm, at times even cheerful, but she had
always red eyes. Once she went to my master and wept and was surprised that
he did not cry too. But he only laughed and said that he did not see what there
was to grieve about: Peter need not be afraid of soldiering; he would have a
good time; he had learnt tailoring; he might even become a cutter in the army
tailors’ department; and then he could laugh at all of them. But my dear
mother wouldn’t hear about laughing, for the time being; she remained
disconsolate: under the circumstances she felt better so. She got ready for me
the finest linen she could lay hold of and marked each garment with a little
cross; but nothing further was said about the recruiting, until the last moment,
when I was starting and mother wished to go with me as far as Krieglach.
“For God’s sake, don’t!” I cried; for how would it have gone off if I had
marched with mother by my side and the lads in front of us with their wild
songs and chaff! Pretty badly: such young devils are lads that there are times
when the gentlest mother’s son of them all blushes for his parents.
“Nay, nay, mother,” said father to her, “you can’t go; you’re no good at
that; and they would only poke fun at the boy.”
My mother did not say another word. She did not even come as far as the
front door with me, for fear of getting me laughed at by the passers-by. Inside,
in the parlour, she dipped her finger in the holy-water stoup and made a cross
with it over my face and then hurried into the next room, to let her tears flow
freely. I felt just a queer sort of choking at the throat, but did not let it master
me. And I won’t warrant that, when, in the dark passage, I made a quick
movement over my eyes, I did not at the same time wipe off the wet mark of
The Forest Farm
Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Titel
- The Forest Farm
- Untertitel
- Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Autor
- Peter Rosegger
- Verlag
- The Vineyard Press
- Ort
- London
- Datum
- 1912
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 169
- Kategorien
- Geographie, Land und Leute
- International