im with her eyes, and was surprised
to see how big he had grown.

Kate had no easy time. However much she fought against Woelfchen
having any intercourse with the Laemkes--positively stood out against
it--the boy was stronger than she. He succeeded in gaining his end; the
children were to come to him, even if he might not go to them. In the
garden, at any rate--he had wrung that concession from his mother.

They had had a struggle, as it were--no loud words and violent
scenes, it is true, no direct prohibitions on her side, no entreaties
on his, but a much more serious, silent struggle. She had felt that he
was setting her at defiance, that the opposition in him increased more
and more until it became dislike--yes, dislike of her. Or did she only
imagine it?

She would have liked to speak to her husband about it--oh,
how she wanted to do it!--but she dreaded his smile, or his indirect
reproach. He had said a short time ago: "It's no trifle to train a
child. One's own is difficult enough, how much more difficult"--no, he
should not say "somebody else's" again, no, never again. This child was
not somebody else's, it was their own--their beloved child. She gave
way to Wolfgang. Anyhow there was no danger if the children came to him
in the garden; she could always see and hear them there. And she would
be good to them, she made up her mind the children should not suffer
because she had already had to weep many a secret tear at night on her
pillow on account of their friendship. She would make her boy fond of
the garden, so fond that he would never long to go out into the street
again.

But when she hid the coloured eggs on Easter Sunday, the day she had
given Woelfchen permission to invite the Laemkes and also the coachman's
son into the garden, and put the nests and hares and chickens into the
box-tree that was covered with shoots and among the clusters of blue
scyllas that had just commenced to flower, something like anger rose in
her heart. Now these children would come with their bad manners and
clumsy shoes and tread down her beds, those flower-beds with which they
had taken so much trouble, and in which the hyacinths were already
showing buds under the branches that protected them and the tulips
lifting up their heads. What a pity! And what a pity they would not be
able to enjoy this first really spring day quietly, listening
undisturbed to the piping blackbird. And they had even refused to come.
Hans Flebbe had