Whenever the wind rustled among the branches around them she shuddered and instinctively drew her own shawl closer about her shoulder; she would have given a year’s toil could she have wrapped the thick woolen garment about the tiny form of her loved one, who never seemed so dear to her as then.

“Gustav,” she whispered, twitching his elbow, “I want to speak one word to you.”

“Speak out; they cannot understand us,” he answered, alluding to the fact that they were using their own language.

“Yes, but I don’t want Nick to know what I say.”

The husband thereupon fell back beside her, and in a tremulous voice she said: 

“Do you remember when Nellie was three years old?”

“Of course I remember further back than that:  why do you ask?”

“When she had the fever and was getting well?”

“Yes, I cannot forget it; poor girl, her cheeks were so hot I could almost light a match by them; but, thank God, she got over it.”

“You remember, Gustav, how cross she was and how hard it was to please her?”

“But that was because she was sick; when she was well, then she laughed all the time, just like Nick when he don’t feel bad.”

“But—­but,” and there was an unmistakable tremor in the voice, “one day when she was cross she asked for a drink of water; Nick was sitting in the room and jumped up and brought it to her, but she was so out of humor she shook her head and would not take it from him; she was determined I should hand it to her.  I thought she was unreasonable and I told Nick to set it on the bureau, and I let Nellie know she shouldn’t have it unless she took it from him; I meant that I wouldn’t hand it to her and thereby humor her impatience.  She cried, but she was too stubborn to give in, and I refused to hand her the water.  Nick felt so bad he left the room, and I was sorry; but Nellie was getting well, and I was resolved to be firm with her.  She was very thirsty, for her fever was a terrible one.  I was tired and dropped into a doze.  By-and-by I heard Nellie’s bare feet pattering on the floor, and softly opening my eyes, without stirring I saw her walk hastily to the bureau, catch hold of the tumbler and she drank every drop of water in it.  She was so weak and dizzy that she staggered back and threw herself on the bed like one almost dead.  The next day she was worse, and we thought we were going to lose her.  You saw how hard I cried, but most of my tears were caused by the remembrance of my cruelty to her the night before.”

“But, Katrina, you did right,” said the father, who heard the affecting incident for the first time.  “It won’t do to humor children so much:  it will spoil them.”

“That may be, but I cannot help thinking of that all the time; it would have done no harm to humor Nellie that time, for she was a good girl.”

“You speak truth, but—­”

The poor father, who tried so bravely to keep up, broke down and was unable to speak.  The story touched him as much as it did the mother.