thin,
blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.

Small as the house was, it was large enough for two people who lived
in it. I want to tell you a story today about these two people. One
was an old gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of the
village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had come
into the world with the huge mountains and the giant fir trees, which
stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled all
over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read
aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy,
self-sacrifice; of loving, anxious, watching beside sick-beds; of
quiet endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a
thousand deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course,
they could not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she
was old and wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of
them seemed to fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she
had a kindly word for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her
way to and from the village. With this old, old woman lived a very
little girl. So bright and happy was she that the travellers who
passed by the lonesome little house on the edge of the forest often
thought of a sunbeam as they saw her. These two people were known in
the village as Granny Goodyear and Little Gretchen.

The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller
branches of the pine trees in the forest. Gretchen and her granny were
up by daybreak each morning. After their simple breakfast of oatmeal,
Gretchen would run to the little closet and fetch Granny's old woolen
shawl, which seemed almost as old as Granny herself. Gretchen always
claimed the right to put the shawl over Granny's head, even though she
had to climb onto the wooden bench to do it. After carefully pinning
it under Granny's chin, she gave her a good-bye kiss, and Granny
started out for her morning's work in the forest. This work was
nothing more nor less than the gathering up of the twigs and branches
which the autumn winds and winter frosts had thrown upon the ground.
These were carefully gathered into a large bundle which Granny tied
together with a strong linen band. She then managed to lift the bundle
to her shoulder and trudged off to the village with it. Here she sold
the fagots for kindling wood to the people of the village. Sometimes
she would get on