Kate went through the list of her acquaintances; there was not a single child that would not have cried if he had got such a wound, and he would not have been considered a coward on that account. There was no doubt about it, Woelfchen was less sensitive. Not only more insensible to bodily pain, no--and she thought she had noticed it several times--also more insensible to emotion. Even in the case of joy. Did not other children show their happiness by clapping their hands and shouting? Did not they dance round the thing they wanted--the toy, the doll, the cake--with shouts of delight? He only held out his hand for it in silence. He took it because he had been told to do so, without all the childish chatter, without the rapturous delight that makes it so attractive and satisfactory to give children gifts. "As a peasant," her husband used to say. That cut her to the quick every time he said it. Was Woelfchen really made of such different material? No, Paul must not say "peasant." Woelfchen was not stupid, only perhaps a little slow in thinking, and he was shrewd enough. He had not been born in a large town, that was it; where they lived now was just like the country. "You peasant!" The next time his father said it--it was said in praise and not to blame him, because he was pleased the boy kept his little garden so well--Kate flew into a passion. Why? Her husband did not understand the reason for it. Why should he not be pleased? Had not the boy put a splendid fence round his garden? He had made a palisade of hazel-sticks into which he had woven flexible willow-twigs, and then he had covered the whole with pine branches to make it close. And he had put beans and peas in his garden, which he had begged the cook to give him; and now he meant to plant potatoes there as well. Had anybody told him how to do it? No, nobody. The first-rate cook and the housemaid were both from a town, what did they know about sowing peas and planting potatoes? "He's a born farmer," said the father laughing. But the mother turned away as though in pain. She would much, much rather have seen her son's garden a mass of weeds than that he should plant, weed and water so busily. She had made him a present of some flowers; but they did not interest him and he was not so successful with them either. There was only a large sunflower that grew and grew. It was soon as high as the boy, soon even higher, and he often stood in front of it, his childish face raised, gazing earnestly into its golden disc for quite a long time. When the sunflower's golden petals withered--then its seeds ripened instead and were examined every day and finally gathered--Wolfgang went to school. He was already in his seventh year, and was big and strong; why should he not learn with other children now?