pened, Christina would look at Ivo with
indescribable pain. She saw all the anguish which her troubles wrote
upon his face, and redoubled her efforts to conceal all things and
smooth them over. The other children were accustomed to such scenes and
no longer distressed by witnessing them.

Seeing the necessity of an explanation with her youngest son, she sat
down one evening by his bedside and said,--

[Illustration: She sat down one evening by his bedside.]

"Do you see? your father is the best and most upright man in the world;
but he has an unlucky disposition, and is not well pleased with
himself, because he sometimes neglects things and spoils a job, and
things won't go as he likes; and then he wants other people to be all
the better pleased with him. When he sees that that isn't so, and it
can't be so, his spirit rises up in him still more: and yet I owe it to
my children not to let things go backward. As for myself, I'm willing
to eat dry bread all my life; but, for the sake of my children, I can't
sit by and see us beggared in five years and my children jostled about
among strangers. I know he loves me better than anybody else in the
world. He would shed his last drop of blood for me, and I for him; but
he wants to mortgage the house and the fields, and to go to work with
Koch, the other carpenter, to build houses for sale; and that's what I
won't do, and no ten horses shall drag me into it. It's my children's
property, and I must be a good mother to them. We're not rich people
any more, and the poor mustn't suffer by our losses, either: they must
have their gifts just as before, if I must squeeze it out of my own
eating. Yes, my dear Ivo, take your mother's advice, and don't forget
the poor. The corn grows on the lea, though you give away some of it;
and our Lord blesses the bread in the cupboard, so that it nourishes
better. You love your father dearly too, don't you, dear Ivo? He is the
best man in the world. You honor him, don't you? You are his pride,
though he don't tell you so, for it's not in him to say it. When he
comes home from the Eagle, where they're always praising you so much
because Christian the tailor's son Gregory writes so well of you, you
could twist him round your little finger. Just make up your mind not to
be distressed by any thing, and don't be sad. What one firmly resolves
to do, one can do, believe me."

Ivo nodded and kissed his mother's hand; but a deep sadness stole over
him. Th