glass-factory in the lower part of the
forest, died three days ago. Go thither early to-morrow morning, and
make a bid for the property. Behave yourself, be industrious, and I
will visit you from time to time, to be at hand with advice and help,
seeing that you did not wish for common-sense. But--and I am now
speaking in all seriousness--your first wish was a bad one. Have a care
of becoming too fond of the tavern, Peter! it is a place which brings
good to nobody in the long run!"

While speaking, the little man had pulled out another pipe of the
finest flint-glass, and after filling it with dried pine-needles, had
thrust it into his little, toothless mouth. He then produced a huge
burning-glass, stepped into the sunlight and lit his pipe. This
business over, he turned to Peter, and shook hands with him in the most
friendly manner, gave him a few more words of advice, puffed away at
his pipe even more vigorously until he disappeared in a cloud of smoke
which gave forth an aroma of the finest Dutch tobacco as it curled
slowly upwards among the pine branches overhead.

On arriving home, Peter found his mother in great trouble about him,
for the good lady had come to the conclusion that her son must have
enlisted as a soldier. But with great glee he bade her be of good
cheer, telling her how he had fallen in with a good friend in the
forest, who had advanced him money so that he could set himself up in a
business other than charcoal-burning. Although his mother had been
living for a good thirty years in the charcoal-burner's hut, and had
grown as accustomed to the sight of grimy faces as a miller's wife to
the flour-covered features of her husband, yet she was vain enough to
despise her former station from the very moment in which Peter showed
her the means to a more ostentatious way of life.

"Ah!" she said, "as the mother of the owner of a glass factory, my
position is very different from that of my neighbours, Greta and Beta;
in future I shall occupy a more prominent place in church, in a pew
where the better class people sit."

Her son soon came to an agreement with the owners of the glass-factory.
He kept on the old staff of workmen, and busied himself night and day
in the manufacture of glass. At first, he was very interested in the
work. It was his pleasure to go down to the glass-works, walking about
with a pompous air and with his hands in both pockets, up and down, in
and out, peeping in here, and peering in