This Month's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.It was written in his features. She liked men who could be both serious and happy, each in its time.
He, however, lookt in her eyes with pleasure. Under the thick blond hair that almost nestled into her eyebrows, they sometimes shone like the cornflowers in the quiet field. It was
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the health, country and the rural purity that he found and loved in the fresh character of this girl.
Hans was keen to get going. The cab was already at the door. The uncle, of course, already lay in bed. But Hutemach, who never went to sleep before everyone in the house was, would wait for them. Fritz could no longer resist his hint; he finally rose to his feet and said goodbye to the priest and his wife with warm words of thanks. Now he also shook Hanna's hand.
"To better neighborliness from to-day on! Right? And if your duty" - he put a soft tone on this word - "takes you to Bärwalde once again, then don't forget that an old, frail man lives there in the manor house, for whom a happy word and face brings a little sunshine into his darkness. And - this, of course, just by the way - also a younger man, for whom a little cheering up after the hard drudgery in the field certainly couldn't hurt. Or is that too insignificant for Samaritan action?"
"I will write it in my workbook as a visit, maybe I won't forget it then."
"Approval and farewell! Or hopefully till we meet again!"
"I am glad that my brotherly warning has fallen on such fertile soil," Hans said as they both sat in the small cab, leaning close against each other, and the gentle mare took a few bold jumps in anticipation of the familiar stable, which she usually didn't do.
Grammatical Minutiae
I don't think that "nestled into" is the best translation of "schmiegten" in this context ("hair that almost nestled into her eyebrows"), but it's the only translation my dictionary supplies, so it's what I have to go with.I've italicized "brings" above, not because I think I translated it wrong but because I don't understand how it's supposed to be parsed. That clause is "dem ein frohes Wort und Gesicht ein wenig Sonnenschein in sein Dunkel bringt." I can translate each word, but either I have the cases wrong or there's a subject-verb disagreement in the text because when I translated it as a whole, I got: "for whom a happy word and face brings a little sunshine into his darkness." There's a plural subject ("ein frohes Wort und Gesicht"/"a happy word and face") but a singular verb ("bringt"/"brings"). I'll admit that what I have isn't the smoothest translation, but I'm not sure how to improve it because I'm confused about the subject(s).
