last, she still sat beside him holding his
hand. She sang the song with which she had so often sung him to
sleep:

"Sleep sound, sweetest child,
Yonder wind howls wild.
Hearken, how the rain makes sprays
And how neighbour's doggie bays.
Doggie has gripped the man forlorn,
Has the beggar's tatter torn--"

She sang it more and more softly. At last she thought he had fallen
asleep, but then he tore his hand away impatiently: "Stop that song!
I'm not a baby any longer!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was fortunate that there were no street boys in the Grunewald
colony, as Woelfchen would assuredly have played with them; as it was,
his playfellows were only a hall-porter's children. There was certainly
no want of nicer children to play with; school-fellows whose parents
lived in similar villas to theirs used to invite him; and the families
in Berlin, with whom the Schliebens were on friendly terms and who were
pleased when their children could get out to the Grunewald on their
holidays, often asked him to come and see them too.

All children liked to come to the shady garden, where Auntie Kate
was always so kind to them. There was always plenty of cakes and fruit
and hoops and balls and croquet and tennis, ninepins and gymnastic
appliances. On sunny afternoons gay laughter and shrieks used to ascend
high up into the green tops of the pines, but--Kate noticed it with
surprise--her boy, who was generally so wild, was the quietest of them
all on those occasions. He did not care for those visits. He did not
care for those well-behaved boys in white and blue sailor-suits, with
their fresh faces showing above their dazzling collars; he never felt
really at home with them. He would have preferred to have run away to a
place far away from there, where nobody else went except now and then a
beggar with a large bag, who would turn over every bit of paper
with his wire hook to see whether something of value had not been left
there the Sunday before. He would have liked to help that man. Or fill
the large bag with pine-cones.

But still Wolfgang had some friends. There was Hans Flebbe--his
father was coachman at the banker's, who owned the splendid villa on
the other side of the road and lived in Bellevuestrasse in Berlin in
the winter--and there were also Artur and Frida. But their father was
only porter in a villa that