She was chattering on, when she felt someone seize hold of her hand. The boy held it in a very firm grip. Bending down to him--for she was tall and thin and her eyes were no longer very good owing to the demi-obscurity of their room--she saw that he had tears in his eyes. She had never seen him cry before, and got quite a fright. "Hush, hush, Woelfchen. Now don't cry, for goodness' sake don't, it isn't worth it." Taking hold of a corner of her coarse blue working-apron--she had just run away from the wash-tub--she wiped his eyes and then his cheeks, and then she stroked the hair that grew so straight and thick on his round head. He stood quite still in the street that was already so sunny, so spring-like, as though rooted to the spot. He who had shrunk from caresses allowed her to stroke him, and did not mind if others saw it too. "I shall come to see you again, Frau Laemke. She can say what she likes. I will come to you." As he went away, not running as he usually did, but slowly and deliberately, the woman followed him 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.