“Ah! children, he was so good and steady,” she would sometimes say, “and as wise as a lawyer. Even the burgomaster would stop to ask him a question, and now, alack! he doesn’t know his wife and little ones. You remember the father, Hans, when he was himself--a great brave man--don’t you?” “Yes, indeed, Mother, he knew everything and could do anything under the sun--and how he would sing! Why, you used to laugh and say it was enough to set the windmills dancing.” “So I did. Bless me! how the boy remembers! Gretel, child, take that knitting needle from your father, quick; he’ll get it in his eyes maybe; and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can’t keep ‘em covered, all I can do--” And then, half wailing, half humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the whirr of her spinning wheel. Nearly all the outdoor work, as well as the household labor, was performed by Hans and Gretel. At certain seasons of the year the children went out day after day to gather peat, which they would stow away in square, bricklike pieces, for fuel. At other times, when homework permitted, Hans rode the towing-horses on the canals, earning a few stivers *{A stiver is worth about two cents of our money.} a day, and Gretel tended geese for the neighboring farmers. Hans was clever at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew and run on great, high homemade stilts better than any other girl for miles around. She could learn a ballad in five minutes and find, in its season, any weed or flower you could name; but she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans, on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in study or daily labor, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him out of school, on account of his patched clothes and scant leather breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honor in nearly every class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school who had not stood at least ONCE in the corner of horrors, where hung a dreaded whip, and over it this motto: “Leer, leer! jou luigaart, of dit endje touw zal je leeren!” *{Learn! learn! you idler, or this rope’s end shall teach you.} It was only in winter that Gretel and Hans could be spared to attend school, and for the past month they had been kept at home because their mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention, and there was black bread to be made, and the house to be kept clean, and stockings and other things to be knitted and sold in the marketplace.