Herr and Frau Sperber worked together, getting through the day's business honestly and good-humoredly. Very early in the morning you might see brisk Frau Sperber in her pink print apron, with her keys jingling at her waist, cross the courtyard to hold a general inspection of the stables and stock-rooms; and Herr Sperber's huge rubber boots carried their fat little master through hedge and ditch, over ploughed field and meadow and woodland. On the Rauchfuss place a brave woman was working beyond her strength; but she made it go--the two properties showed but little difference. To be sure, it would have been much easier for Frau Rauchfuss if her jewel of a husband had been of a less jovial disposition and had not considered it his principal duty to show the people down in Weimar that persons of importance lived up on the Ettersberg, and to prove to them that no one could tell, even when he had his heaviest load on, just how much he was carrying. He could rise from his accustomed table and march to the door just as straight as when he came in; and the exhibition of this faculty called for constant repetition. If Frau Rauchfuss had not had her little daughter Beate, she might have looked a long time for the joys of life. The time came, however, when the child was big enough to dance about in farm-yard and garden, looking like a flower with long golden stamina. She was simply brimming over with merriment and delight in being alive; and now Captain Rauchfuss condescended to take notice of his daughter. He brought her home all sorts of toys and trifles, and took great pleasure in seeing how quick and clever the little creature was, in watching her scramble about and in listening to the soft lips repeat in sweet tones the old soldier's expletives that she heard him use. * * * * * * * * * * * * * When Frau Rauchfuss's treasure grew to be a pretty little schoolgirl, it befell one day that the mother went down to the town with a heavy heart, to ask advice of her doctor about a trouble which for some time she had been silently carrying about with her, and which had made her work a heavy and oppressive burden. After long and anxious consideration she had finally made up her mind to the step, and gone off with a fervent prayer and a passionate kiss to her little girl. And now, as she drove home again in her light carriage, it seemed to her as if, since she came down, the beautiful world had been transformed into a dark and unfamiliar place. She had set out with an anxious heart, and had had no one to speak an encouraging word to her; but still it was only down at the very bottom of her heart that there crouched, half hidden, the fear of what was so hard to realize--that her life might be wiped out.