“After all,” she said, complainingly, to Amrei, “you did a thoughtless thing to come into the house in the way you did, so that we cannot go and fetch you to the wedding.  It was not good, not customary.  If I could only send you away for a short time, or else John, so that it would all be more according to rule.”

And to John she said plaintively: 

“I hear already the talk there’ll be if you marry in such a hurry.  People will say:  ’Twice asked, the third time persuaded—­that’s the way worthless people do it!’”

But she allowed herself to be pacified by both of them, and smiled when John said: 

“Mother, you have studied up everything, like a clergyman.  Then tell me, why should decent people refrain from doing something, simply because indecent people use it as a cloak?  Can any one say anything bad about me?”

“No,—­you have been a good lad all your life.”

“Well, then let them have a little confidence in me now, and believe that a thing may be good, even if it does not look so at first sight.  I have a right to ask that much of them.  The way Amrei and I came together was out of the usual order, to be sure, and the affair has gone on in its own way from the very beginning.  But it wasn’t a bad way.  Why, it’s like a miracle, if we look at it rightly.  And what is it to us if people refuse to believe in miracles nowadays, and prefer to find all sorts of badness in these things?  One must have courage and not ask the world’s opinion in everything.  The clergyman at Hirlingen once said:  ’If a prophet were to rise today, he would first have to pass the government examination and show that what he wanted was in the regular order.’  Now, mother, when one knows for oneself that something is right, then it is best to go forward in a straight line and push aside, right and left, whatever stands in one’s way.  Let people stare and wonder for a while—­they will think better of it in time.”

The mother very likely felt that a thing might be accepted as a miracle if it came in the form of a sudden, happy event, but that even the most unusual things later on must gradually conform to the laws of tradition and of strong, established custom.  The wedding might appear as a miracle, but the marriage, which involved a continuance, would not.  She therefore said: 

“With all these people, whom you now look at with proud indifference, because you know that you are doing right—­with all these people you’ll have to live, and you’ll expect them, not to look at you askance, but to give you due respect.  Now if they are to do that, you must give and allow them what they are accustomed to demand.  You cannot force them to make an exception in your case, and you can’t run after each one separately and say:  ’If you knew how it all came about, you would say that I was quite right in doing it.’”

But John rejoined: 

“You shall see that nobody will have anything to say against my Amrei, when he or she has known her a single hour!”