Kaethe was nursing that youngest, rosiest of her children who knew, as yet, only the sweet fullness of her mother's breast. Carli was sitting at her feet, his head hanging listlessly against her knee. He hadn't run with the others to meet Tante Ilde because he couldn't even stand. He would laugh, a sweet, somewhat surprised little laugh when he tried to pull himself up by a chair and would fall down; but his mother always wanted to weep when she heard the soft little thud as he slipped to the floor. Carli was an angel. Carli, quite evidently to any but a mother's eye, was not to pass another winter on earth. Even in the week since Tante Ilde had seen him he had become more and more like something made of crystal, so smooth, so shining, so transparent was his little face. But she concealed the sudden fear that came over her as she looked from him to his mother. "I'm nursing the baby earlier so I can be ready to help with the dinner," Kaethe said as her aunt bent over to kiss her and Anny,--one fat little hand spread out over her mother's breast, and making soft, contented noises,--little Anny, the last, she must be the last of Kaethe's children, Tante Ilde was thinking.... Kaethe wore a frayed but evidently once expensive, wadded, blue silk wrapper. It struck an unexpected note in that denuded room, whose immediate air of indigence was inescapable. Not only was the piano gone, and long since Eberhardt's 'cello, but gone one after the other the pleasant, superfluous tables and the little objects once set out upon them. Even the bookcases.... What remained of the books was piled in a corner and received many a careless kick from romping children.