many ways.

In summer he sang as he walked. In autumn there were some pleasant days
when his mother and sister ground corn in Staffelbaeck's mill: at that
season he did not dine with Mrs. Hankler, but met them in the
trembling, thundering mill, and dined with them at the mill table.
Winter was the most pleasant season of all. Nat, who was something of a
Jack-of-all-trades, had shod Ivo's little sledge with an old iron
barrel-hoop. At the hill-top he would sit down on his little conveyance
and sweep down the road to the Neckar bridge swift as an arrow. With
chattering teeth, he often said his rule of syntax or his Latin
quotation for next day as he rode. True, in the evening he had to pull
his sledge up the hill again by a rope; but that he liked to do.
Sometimes a wagon would pass, and then, if the teamster was not very
ill-natured, he would take the sledge in tow.

Ivo acted as a sort of penny postman for half the village: for one, he
would carry yarn to be dyed; for another, a letter to the mail; and for
another, he would inquire whether there was a letter for him. In coming
home, his satchel sometimes contained a few skeins of silk, some herb
tea, leeches in a phial, patent medicine, or some other purchase he had
been commissioned to make. All this made him very popular in the
village, while Peter and Constantine always scorned such uncongenial
service.

One Sunday afternoon there was great excitement in the village when the
President-Judge's two sons came in their red caps to visit Ivo. Mother
Christina was looking out of the window when she heard them ask Blind
Conrad the way to Ivo's house; and, although the room had been put into
good order, she was in great trepidation. In her embarrassment she laid
the stool on the bed, and took a pair of boots from the corner in which
they had been stowed, putting them under the table in the middle of the
room. Hearing the visitors come up the steps, she opened the door with
great bashfulness, but yet with not a little pleasure, and welcomed
them. Then she called out of the window to Emmerence, telling her to
look for Ivo and for his father, and to send them in quickly to receive
company.

Wiping off the two chairs, for the fortieth time, with her white Sunday
apron, she pressed the boys to be seated. She apologized that things
looked so disorderly. "It is the way with farmers' folk," said she,
looking bashfully at the floor, which was scrubbed so clean that it
was an ea