"Yes, that same cat has two legs and tells lies!" mother retorted.
And she took me and thrashed me for a long time with the rod.
"If ever you tell me a lie again," she cried, when she had done, "I'll cut you to pieces with the flue-rake!"
A serious threat! Thank goodness, it never had to be fulfilled.
On the other hand, when I was good and obedient, I was rewarded. My reward took the form of songs which she sang to me, tales which she told me, when we walked through the forest together or when she sat by my bedside in the evening. All that is best in me I have from her. She had a worldful of poetry within her.
When my brothers and sisters came one after the other, mother loved us all alike and favoured none. Afterwards, when two died in their childhood, I saw mother for the first time crying. We others cried with her and thenceforth always cried whenever we saw mother shedding tears.
And this was quite often, from that time onwards. Father lay sick for two years on end. We had ill-luck in the farm and in the fields; hail and murrain came; our corn-mill was burnt down.
Then mother wept in secret, lest we children should see her. And she worked without ceasing, fretted, and ended by falling ill. The doctors of the whole neighbourhood around were called in to advise: they could do nothing but charge fat fees; only one of them said:
"I won't take payment from such poor people."
Yes, in spite of all our jollity, we had become poor people. The goods and chattels were all gone; of the once big property nothing remained to us but the taxes. My father now resolved to sell the encumbered farm as well as he could. But mother would not have it: she worked on, ill as she was, with trouble and zeal, and never gave up hope. She could not bear to think of giving up her home, the house where her children were born. She denied her illness, said that she had never felt better in her life and that she would work for three.
My brothers and sisters also considered that they could not leave the homestead; besides, none of them had one good pair of shoes left to put on. And mother, when, once in a way, she wished to go to the parish church, had to borrow a jacket free from patches from some journeyman-woodman's wife or other. And the greatest pain of all was people's arrogance and their scorn if ever they did lend any assistance. They had forgotten the kindnesses which my mother had once shown to one and all according to her power. At that time, she was the most honoured farmer's wife in all the houses in the forest. But--misfortune destroys friendship! As, indeed, her mother, the charcoal-burner, had often said.