streaming across their
mossy table, and the mother opens the basket and gives to every one a
share.

Below them is the river, with its boats and beautiful shining water;
behind them are the vine-covered walls of that old castle where two
hundred years ago lived armed knights and stately ladies; and all
about them is the rich September air, full of the sweet fragrance
of the grapes, and echoing with the songs and laughter of the
grape-gatherers. On their rocky table are purple bunches of fruit, in
their cups the new wine-juice, and in their hearts all the joy of the
merry grape season.

There are many days like this in the autumn, but the frost will come
at last, and the snow too. This is winter, but winter brings the best
pleasure of all.

When two weeks of the winter had nearly passed, the children, as you
may suppose, began to think of Christmas, and, indeed, their best
and most loving friend had been preparing for them the sweetest of
Christmas presents. Ten days before Christmas it came, however. Can
you guess what it was? Something for all of them,--something which
Christian will like just as well as little Gretchen will, and the
father and mother will perhaps be more pleased than any one else.

Do you know what it is? What do you think of a little baby brother,--a
little round, sweet, blue-eyed baby brother as a Christmas present for
them all?

When Christmas Eve came, the mother said: "The children must have
their Christmas-tree in my room, for baby is one of the presents, and
I don't think I can let him be carried out and put upon the table in
the hall, where we had it last year."

So all day long the children are kept away from their mother's room.
Their father comes home with his great coat-pockets very full of
something, but, of course, the children don't know what. He comes and
goes, up stairs and down, and, while they are all at play in the snow,
a fine young fir-tree is brought in and carried up. Louise knows it,
for she picked up a fallen branch upon the stairs, but she doesn't
tell Fritz and Gretchen.

How they all wait and long for the night to come! They sit at the
windows, watching the red sunset light upon the snow, and cannot think
of playing or eating their supper. The parlor door is open, and all
are waiting and listening. A little bell rings, and in an instant
there is a scampering up the broad stairs to the door of mother's
room; again the little bell rings, and the door is opened wide