or, The Silver Skates 131

« Ah, how handy Hans is! If he were here, he could turn
the father some way so the moans would stop. Dear, dear! if
this sickness lasts, we shall never skate any more. I must send
my new skates back to the beautiful lady. Hans and I will
and Gretel’s eyes, that had been dry before,

?

not see the race ;’
grew full of tears.

“ Never cry, child,’ said her mother, soothingly. ‘ This
sickness may not be as bad as we think. The father has lain
this way before.”

Gretel sobbed now.

“OQ mother! it is not that alone: you do not know all. I
am very, very bad and wicked ! ”

“You, Gretel! — you so patient and good!” and a bright,
puzzled look beamed for an instant upon the child. “ Hush,
lovey! you ll wake him.”

Gretel hid her face in her mother’s lap, and tried not to cry.

Her little hand, so thin and brown, lay in the coarse palm
of her mother, creased with many a hard day’s work. Rychie
would have shuddered to touch either ; yet they pressed warmly ,
upon each other. Soon Gretel looked up with that dull, homely
look, which they say poor children in shanties are apt to have,
and said in a trembling voice, —

“ The father tried to burn you, he did: I saw him — and
he was laughing |”

“ Hush, child! ”

The mother’s words came so suddenly and sharply that Raff
Brinker, dead as he: was to all that was passing round him,
twitched slightly upon the bed.

Gretel said no more, but plucked drearily at the jagged edge
of a hole in her mother’s holiday gown. It had been burned
there. Well for Dame Brinker that the gown was woollen.