In the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of frozen air
and a spray of driven snow struck like ice through the room, and
reached them even in the warmth of the old wolfskins and the great
stove. It was the door which had opened and let in the cold; it
was their father who had come home.
The younger children ran joyous to meet him. Dorothea pushed the
one wooden armchair of the room to the stove, and August flew to
set the jug of beer on a little round table, and fill a long clay
pipe; for their father was good to them all, and seldom raised his
voice in anger, and they had been trained by the mother they had
loved to dutifulness and obedience and a watchful affection.
To-night Karl Strehla responded very wearily to the young ones'
welcome, and came to the wooden chair with a tired step and sat
down heavily, not noticing either pipe or beer.
"Are you not well, dear father?" his daughter asked him.
"I am well enough," he answered dully, and sat there with his head
bent, letting the lighted pipe grow cold.
He was a fair, tall man, gray before his time, and bowed with
labor.
"Take the children to bed," he said suddenly, at last, and
Dorothea obeyed. August stayed behind, curled before the stove; at
nine years old, and when one earns money in the summer from the
farmers, one is not altogether a child any more, at least in one's
own estimation.
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