Then she passed on to the vegetable department. Fresh vegetables were sent every Saturday regularly to the market at Münsterberg, but it scarcely paid to compete with the peasant folk; still, in another direction, a great success had been scored. She got several dozen little baskets plaited from reeds, which a blind man made her for twopence each. These little baskets were daintily arranged with leaves, and filled, according to the season, with strawberries, cherries, and other fruit. The milk-boys offered them for sale in Münsterberg, and they had enjoyed quite a reputation. Three days later, all the little baskets were collected empty, but if any customers wished to keep basket as well as fruit they were to pay threepence more, and this extra penny helped to pay the old blind man. Her face was radiant with zeal, her hair wild, and her hands trembled as she sat there calculating one sum of money after the other. She would have liked to demonstrate her success by showing him the figures, but no matter how she turned over the leaves, she could not find the total, and the columns swam before her in crazy confusion. And in the midst of her narration she had caught him looking at her with an inquiring, astonished gaze, and she felt a choking sensation of sheer joy in her throat; but she collected herself and proceeded further with her good tidings. She had come now to the most important thing of all--the milk and the dairy produce. Here, of course, she had not been able to do as much as she wished, for these stupendous affairs came under Uncle Kutowski's management. However, she had got round Schumann, and worked him so effectually that he was willing to help her. The experiment of sending cream in bottles to Königsberg had been a failure, but for slightly salted fresh butter a trade had been opened with Friedrich Graz in Berlin, which was doing first-class business. This did not hinder the morning milk, according to old custom, being despatched by waggon to Münsterberg; and she felt bound to confess with pride that the popularity of the Halewitz fruit-baskets had increased considerably the daily demand for milk. She and the swineherd were at war as to how the butter-milk ought to be used. The Swiss cook at Stoltenhof had given her a famous receipt for making cheese of butter-milk. The Mamselle had made excellent use of it, yet all the leavings were demanded for the pigs, although they could very well be fed on the husks and refuse from the brewery. Hertha thought these claims preposterous, and hoped that Leo would see that the lion's share of the butter-milk were restored to its proper uses. And now she had finished, and she laid the blue exercise-book down with modest satisfaction, and went back to grandmamma, who had been listening to her report, beaming with delight. He followed her, and grasped her industrious little hand with a smile in which there was a gleam of almost paternal emotion.