lue-eyed, sunny-haired little friend, and here
in the garden she plays with Fritz and sturdy little Gretchen. And
here, too, at evening the father and mother come to sit on the
piazza among the roses, and the children leave their games, to nestle
together on the steps while the dear brother Christian plays softly
and sweetly on his flute.

Louise is a motherly child, already eight years old, and always
willing and glad to take care of the younger ones; indeed, she calls
Gretchen _her_ baby, and the little one loves dearly her child-mamma.

They live in this great house, and they have plenty of toys and books,
and plenty of good food, and comfortable little beds to sleep in at
night, although, like Jeannette's, they are only neat little boxes
built against the side of the wall.

But near them, in the valley, live the poor people, in small, low
houses. They eat black bread, wear coarse clothes, and even the
children must work all day that they may have food for to-morrow.

The mother of Louise is a gentle, loving woman; she says to her
children: "Dear children, to-day we are rich, we can have all that
we want, but we will not forget the poor. You may some day be poor
yourselves, and, if you learn now what poverty is, you will be more
ready to meet it when it comes." So, day after day, the great stove
in the kitchen is covered with stew-pans and kettles, in which are
cooking dinners for the sick and the poor, and day after day, as the
dinner-hour draws near, Louise will come, and Fritz, and even little
Gretchen, saying: "Mother, may I go?" "May I go?" and the mother
answers: "Dear children, you shall all go together"; and she fills the
bowls and baskets, and sends her sunny-hearted children down into the
valley to old Hans the gardener, who has been lame with rheumatism so
many years; and to young Marie, the pale, thin girl, who was so merry
and rosy-cheeked in the vineyard a year ago; and to the old, old woman
with the brown, wrinkled face and bowed head, who sits always in the
sunshine before the door, and tries to knit; but the needles drop from
the poor trembling hands, and the stitches slip off, and she cannot
see to pick them up. She is too deaf to hear the children as they come
down the road, and she is nodding her poor old head, and feeling about
in her lap for the lost needle, when Louise, with her bright eyes,
spies it, picks it up, and before the old woman knows she has come,
a soft little hand is laid in th