family during Hans's first year as
soldier. Their food ration at home had been nine and a half cents daily.
Wheat bread had stood for festivals and high days. Black bread, cabbage
soup, beer, cheese, and sausage, with meat on Sundays, had been their
only ambition as to food, and here Grossvater Bauer insisted upon the
same regimen, and frowned as one by one the fashions of the new country
crept in. Peter had been right after all. One must work, it is true, but
no harder and no longer, and the return was double. The little iron
chest which had held the savings at home held them here, and at rare
intervals the Grossvater allowed Lotte to look, and said as he turned
over the shining coins, "Thou wilt have most, my Lottchen. It is for
thee that I put them away."

"There is enough for a little farm," Lotte said one day. "We could go on
this Long Island and have land, and not be shut all day in these dark
rooms."

"That is slower," the Grossvater said. "We will go back with much money
when it is earned, and I shall be owner, and thou, Lotte, the mistress,
and Franz maybe will go also."

Lotte shook her head, though her cheeks were pink.

"Franz cares only for America," she said. "Come with us some day,
Grossvater, and let us look at the little house he knows. There is land,
two acres, and a barn and a cow, and all for so little. I could be
stronger then."

"That is folly," the old man said angrily. "It would be but shillings
there, where here it is dollars. Wait and you will see."

Lotte looked after him wonderingly as he turned away. To save was
becoming his passion. He grudged her even her shoes and the dress she
must have, though no one had so little. Peter revolted openly and came
less and less. Lieschen cried, but still looked at the week's wages as
compensation for many evils, and Lotte worked on, the pink spot fixing
itself on her cheeks, and her blue eyes growing sadder with every week.
Franz, the son of their old neighbor at home, hated this crowded city as
she did, and urged her to take her chances and marry him, even if, as
yet, he was only laborer in the market gardens out on the Island. There
were minutes when Lotte nearly yielded, but the Grossvater seemed to
hold her as with chains. She loved him, and she had always submitted.
Perhaps in time he would yield and learn again to care for the old life
of the country.

At last a change came, but there was in it no release, only closer
imprisonment. Peter an