sh, but Lotte kept them scoured. She went to church barefoot, and
put on her shoes at the door. Good things such as coffee and plums, that
the poorest hut has now-a-days, we never saw. We didn't save much, for
crops sold cheap. But I didn't speculate, nor squeeze money from the
sweat of the poor. In time five pretty little chatterboxes arrived, all
flaxen-haired girls with blue eyes, or brown. I was satisfied with
girls, but the mother hankered after a boy. That's a poor father that
prefers a son to a daughter. A man ought to take boys and girls alike,
just as God sends them. I was glad enough to work for my girls, and I
didn't worry about their future, nor build castles in the air for them
to live in. After fifteen years the boy arrived, but he took himself
quickly out of the world and coaxed his mother away with him."

Little brother was silent, and bowed his snow-white head. My heart felt
as if the dead wife flitted through the room and gently touched the old
fellow's thin locks. I saw him kneeling at her death-bed, heard the
little girls sobbing, and waited in silence till he drew himself up,
sighing deeply:--

"My Lotte died; she left me alone. What didn't I promise the dear Lord
in those black hours! My life, my savings, yea, all my children if He
would but leave her to me. In vain. 'My thoughts are not thy thoughts,
saith the Lord, and My ways are not thy ways.' It was night in my soul.
I cried over my children, and I only half did my work. At night I
tumbled into bed tearless and prayerless. Oh, sad time! God vainly
knocked at my heart's door until the children fell ill. Oh, what would
become of me if these flowers were gathered? What wealth these rosy
mouths meant to me, how gladly would they smile away my sorrow! I had
set myself up above the Lord. But by my children's bedside I prayed for
grace. They all recovered. I took my motherless brood to God's temple to
thank Him there. Church-going won't bring salvation, but staying away
from church makes a man stupid and coarse.

"But I am forgetting, little sister. I started to tell you about my
fifteen children. You see I made up my mind that I had to find a mother
for the chicks. I wouldn't chain a young thing to my bonds, even if she
understood housekeeping. I held to the saying, 'Equal wealth, equal
birth, equal years make a good match.' When an old widower courts a
young girl he looks at her faults with a hundred eyes when he measures
her with his first wife.