"Is father not in, Dorothea?"
"No, dear. He is late."
Dorothea was a girl of seventeen, dark-haired and serious, and
with a sweet sad face, for she had had many cares laid on her
shoulders, even whilst still a mere baby. She was the eldest of
the Strehla family; and there were ten of them in all. Next to her
there came Jan and Karl and Otho, big lads, gaining a little for
their own living; and then came August, who went up in the summer
to the high alps with the farmers' cattle, but in winter could do
nothing to fill his own little platter and pot; and then all the
little ones, who could only open their mouths to be fed like young
birds,--Albrecht and Hilda, and Waldo and Christof, and last of
all little three-year-old Ermengilda, with eyes like forget-me-
nots, whose birth had cost them the life of their mother.
They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half Italian, so
common in the Tyrol; some of the children were white and golden as
lilies, others were brown and brilliant as fresh fallen chestnuts.
The father was a good man, but weak and weary with so many to find
for and so little to do it with. He worked at the salt furnaces,
and by that gained a few florins; people said he would have worked
better and kept his family more easily if he had not loved his
pipe and a draught of ale too well; but this had only been said of
him after his wife's death, when trouble and perplexity had begun
to dull a brain never too vigorous, and to enfeeble further a
character already too yielding.
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