like ice half the time, but
I can't keep 'em covered, all I can do--" And then, half wailing, half
humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the
whirr of her spinning wheel.

Nearly all the outdoor work, as well as the household labor, was
performed by Hans and Gretel. At certain seasons of the year the
children went out day after day to gather peat, which they would
stow away in square, bricklike pieces, for fuel. At other times, when
homework permitted, Hans rode the towing-horses on the canals, earning
a few stivers *{A stiver is worth about two cents of our money.} a day,
and Gretel tended geese for the neighboring farmers.

Hans was clever at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good
gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew and run on great, high homemade
stilts better than any other girl for miles around. She could learn a
ballad in five minutes and find, in its season, any weed or flower
you could name; but she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the
figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans,
on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in
study or daily labor, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him
out of school, on account of his patched clothes and scant leather
breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honor in nearly every
class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school
who had not stood at least ONCE in the corner of horrors, where hung a
dreaded whip, and over it this motto: "Leer, leer! jou luigaart, of dit
endje touw zal je leeren!" *{Learn! learn! you idler, or this rope's end
shall teach you.}

It was only in winter that Gretel and Hans could be spared to attend
school, and for the past month they had been kept at home because their
mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention,
and there was black bread to be made, and the house to be kept
clean, and stockings and other things to be knitted and sold in the
marketplace.

While they were busily assisting their mother on this cold December
morning, a merry troop of girls and boys came skimming down the canal.
There were fine skaters among them, and as the bright medley of costumes
flitted by, it looked from a distance as though the ice had suddenly
thawed and some gay tulip bed were floating along on the current.

There was the rich burgomaster's daughter Hilda van Gleck, with her
costly furs and loose