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But if Andreas did thus sacrifice his birds for Christine’s good, he did not grudge the sacrifice; for upon the big Conrad poverty and sickness had exercised a chastening and most wholesome influence. He got up out of his bed a changed man; and the change, morally at least, was greatly for the better. Physically the result was less salutary; indeed, he never quite recovered from his sharp attack; and three or four years later, just as his business was getting into good shape again, he sickened suddenly, and then promptly paid to nature the debt that all men owe, and that his partial return to health had but a little time delayed.

But Christine was not left desolate in the world, for in the last year of her husband’s life the strong yearning that so possessed her had been satisfied, and she was the mother of a baby girl. Andreas, claiming the fulfilment of the promise made so long before, had stood godfather to the little Rosa–for so, because of her fresh rosiness, was she named; and there was a strange, sorrowful longing in his heart when, the rite being ended, he came again to his lonely home and sat him down to be comforted by the singing of his birds: for while the children of Alice call Bartram father, there must be ever a weary weight of sadness in the world.

Life had not given so much of happiness to Christine–though, possibly, her happiness was equal to her deserts–that her hold upon life was a very firm one; and although she tried, for the little Roschen’s sake, to put fresh strength into her grasp, the pressure of poverty and care and sorrow all combined to make her loosen it. Gently, a little at a time, her hold gave way. She knew what was coming, and so did Andreas. Once or twice they spoke about it; and spoke also of the old days on the Andreasberg, when began the love that in one of their hearts at least never had grown cold. And for this old love’s sake Andreas promised that when she was gone the little Rosehen should find a home with him and with his birds. It was not a great while after this promise was made that the end came.

Some of the women laughed a little, and cried a little too, when, after the funeral, old Andreas–for so already had they begun to call him, because of his silent habit and quaint, old-fashioned ways–asked to be shown how a baby should be carried; and, being in this matter properly instructed, bore away with careful tenderness in his arms the little Rosehen to her new home. And when he was come home with her, the birds, as though in welcome–which seemed the more real because certain of the tamer ones among them came forth from their open cages and perched upon his arm–

The good-wives living thereabouts were somewhat shocked at the thought of risking a baby’s life in the care of a man who was qualified only to minister intelligently to the needs of baby canary-birds; yet were they not a little touched when they came–in unnecessary numbers, as Andreas thought–to give him the benefit of their superior wisdom in the premises by finding how well, in a queer, awkward way, he was discharging the duties of his office; and such gentleness in a man they all vowed that they had never seen. Yet it was not surprising that his quaint effort was crowned with so signal a success; as the birds could have explained, had their song-notes been rendered into human speech, Andreas had served an apprenticeship in caring for them which well fitted him to care with a mother’s tenderness for this little girl, who, such was his love for her, seemed to him in all verity to be his own proper child. Benefiting by the advice which so lavishly was bestowed upon him, he presently became–as even the most critical of the women were forced to admit–a much better mother to the little Roschen than many a real mother might have been. It was, indeed, a sight worth travelling far to see, this of Andreas washing and dressing the baby in the sunny room at the back of the shop where hung the cages in which were the choicest of his birds. Roschen’s first conscious memory was of laughing and splashing in her little tub in the sunshine, while all around her was a carolling of song.