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 wasted his property,” his wife said. “While we were rich the burgomaster himself was our friend, but now even that poverty-stricken woman won’t raise a finger to help us See how the poor infant shivers, for I haven’t even any old rags in which to wrap it! And it has to lie on the bare straw! God have mercy on us, how poor we are!” So she wept over the baby, covering it with tears and kisses.

Suddenly a happy thought came to her. She wiped away her tears and said to her husband:

“I beg you, Lukas, go to our old neighbor, the burgomaster’s wife. She is wealthy. I’m sure she hasn’t forgotten that I was godmother to her child. Go and ask her if she will be godmother to mine.”

“I don’t think she will,” Lukas answered, “but I’ll ask her.”

With a heavy heart he went by the fields and the barns that had once been his own and entered the house of his old friend, the burgomaster.

“God bless you, neighbor,” he said to the burgomaster’s wife. “My wife sends her greeting and bids me tell you that God has given us a little daughter whom she wants you to hold at the christening.”

The burgomaster’s wife looked at him and laughed in his face.