The effect of continued malnutrition seemed to have been surprisingly slight on those in the prime of life. The children of ten years before, men and women now, were plump and hardy, though the color in their cheeks was by no means equal even to that of the grandfather—sleeping now in the churchyard—at the time of my former visit. Of the two granddaughters, the one born three years before, when the blockade was only beginning to be felt in these backwaters of the Empire, was stout and rosy enough; but her sister of nine months looked pitifully like the waxen image of a maltreated infant of half that age. The simple-hearted, plodding head of the household, nearing sixty, had shrunk almost beyond recognition to those who had known him in his plump and prosperous years, while his wife had outdistanced even him in her decline. Business in the market-gardening line had fallen off chiefly because of the scarcity of seeds and fertilizers. Then there was the ever more serious question of labor. Old women who had gladly accepted three marks for toiling from dawn until dark ten years before received eleven now for scratching languidly about the gardens a bare eight hours with their hoes and rakes. Male help had begun to drift back since the armistice, but it was by no means equal to the former standard in numbers, strength, or willingness. On top of all this came a crushing burden of taxation. When all the demands of the government were reckoned up they equaled 40 per cent. of the ever-decreasing income. The war had brought one advantage, though it was as nothing compared to the misfortunes. For generations two or three members of the family had spent six mornings a week, all summer long, at the market-place in the heart of town. Since the fall of 1914 not a sprig of produce had been carried there for sale; clamoring women now besieged the gate of the establishment itself in far greater numbers than the gardens could supply. The hardship of the past four years was not the prevailing topic of conversation in the household, however, nor when the subject was forced upon them was it treated in a whining spirit. Most of the family, like their neighbors, adroitly avoided it, as a proud prize-fighter might sidestep references to the bruises of a recent beating. Only the mother could now and then be drawn into specifying details of the disaster.