having any time to play, live entirely deprived
of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it
is.

Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the
Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all
German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at
little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and
scat. They are very thrifty people.

Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And that
is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty
miles away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added
her wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become
as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum
pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for
dinner every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to
work and assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you
can, what it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home
in the pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre's
castle, where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour
cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust
from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak,
aching fingers. And then--to have Grimm taken away from you!

Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained
canned corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She
was going to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post
it for her at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the
quarries, went home to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in
the shadows under Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to
him. That was the only way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg.
Mrs. Maloney did not like for her to write letters.

The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood
from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she
wrote:

Dearest Mamma:--I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Claus
and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you.
To-day I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could
not bring in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book
yesterday. I mean "Grimm's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo gave me.
It did not hurt any one for me to read the book. I try to work as