g on in the garden. Their plan was to use this time to-day in
order to shake the tree and fill their pockets full of plums. I was to
help them. I told them what a disgrace it was for them to ask me and I
said that I would find means to prevent it. So they noisily called me a
traitor and told me that accusing them was worse than stealing plums. I
said that it wasn't my intention to tell on them, but I would come and
use my whip as soon as they touched the tree. So they laughed and
sneered at me and said that they were neither afraid of me nor of my
whip. As soon as our lessons were done at twelve o'clock, they ran to
the garden and, getting the whip I had hidden in the hallway, I ran after
them. Edwin was already half way up the tree and Eugene was just
beginning to climb it. First I only threatened and tried in that way to
force Edwin down and keep Eugene from going further. But they kept on
sneering at me till Edwin had reached the first branch and was shaking it
so hard that the lovely plums came spattering to the ground. I got so
furious at that that I began to beat first the boy higher up and then the
lower one. First, Edwin tumbled down on top of Eugene and then they both
ran away moaning, while I kept on striking them. They left the plums on
the ground and I followed them."

"It is terrible, Bruno, that such scenes have to come up between you all
the time," the mother lamented. "You are always the one who gets wild
and loses control. It is hard to excuse that, even if your intention is
good, Bruno. I wish I could keep you boys apart."

"It was a good thing he became furious at them to-day, mother," Kurt
remarked. "You see it shows that even two can't get the better of him.
If he had not been so mad, the two would have been stronger, and our poor
Rector would have lost his plums."

It was hard to tell if this explanation comforted the mother. She had
gone out with a sign to attend to Bruno's belated lunch. The time was
already near at hand when all the children had to get back to school.

When that same evening the little ones were happily playing and the big
children were busy with their school work, Kurt stole up to his mother's
chair and asked her in a low voice, "Shall we have the story to-day?"

The mother nodded. "As soon as the little ones are in bed." At this
Maezli pricked up her ears.

When all the work was done in the evening, all the family usually played
a game together. Kurt, who was usually the