In the winter Amrei was at Crappy Zachy’s much of the time, for she was very fond of hearing him play the violin; yes, and Crappy Zachy on one occasion bestowed such high praise upon her as to say:  “You are not stupid;” for Amrei, after listening to his playing for a long time, had remarked:  “It’s wonderful how a fiddle can hold its breath so long; I can’t do that.”  And, on quiet winter nights at home, when Marianne told sparkling and horrifying goblin-stories, Amrei, when they were finished, would draw a deep breath and say:  “Oh, Marianne, I must take breath now—­I was obliged to hold my breath all the time you were speaking.”

No one paid much attention to Amrei, and the child could dream away just as she had a mind to.  Only the schoolmaster said once at a meeting of the Village Council, that he had never seen such a child—­she was at once defiant and yielding, dreamy and alert.  In truth, with all her childish self-forgetfulness, there was already developing in little Amrei a sense of responsibility, an attitude of self-defense in opposition to the world, its kindness and its malice.  Damie, on the other hand, came crying and complaining to his sister upon every trifling occasion.  He was, furthermore, always pitying himself, and when he was tumbled over by his playmates in their wrestling matches, he always whined:  “Yes, because I am an orphan they beat me!  Oh, if my father and mother knew of it!”—­and then he cried twice as much over the injustice of it.  Damie let everybody give him things to eat, and thus became greedy, while Amrei was satisfied with a little, and thus acquired habits of moderation.  Even the roughest boys were afraid of Amrei, although nobody knew how she had proved her strength, while Damie would run away from quite little boys.  In school Damie was always up to mischief; he shuffled his feet and turned down the leaves of the books with his fingers as he read.  Amrei, on the other hand, was always bright and attentive, though she often wept in the school, not for the punishment she herself received, but because Damie was so often punished.

Amrei could please Damie best by telling him the answers to riddles.  The children still used to sit frequently by the house of their rich guardian, sometimes near the wagons, sometimes near the oven behind the house, where they used to warm themselves, especially in the autumn.  Once Amrei asked: 

“What’s the best thing about an oven?”

“You know I can’t guess anything,” replied Damie, plaintively.

“Then I’ll tell you: 

  ’In the oven this is best, ’tis said,
  That it never itself doth eat the bread.’”

And then, pointing to the wagons before the house, Amrei asked: 

“What’s full of holes, and yet holds? “—­and without waiting for a reply, she gave the answer:  “A chain!”

“Now you must let me ask you these riddles,” said Damie.

And Amrei replied:  “Yes, you may ask them.  But do you see those sheep coming yonder?  Now I know another riddle.”