Magdalis smiled, and hit on a plan for bringing this about.  With some difficulty she persuaded the old man to take his dinner every Sunday and holiday with them, and she always set an ewer of water—­and a towel, relic of her old burgher life—­by him, before the meal.

“We were a kind of Pharisees in our home,” she said, “and except we washed our hands, never ate bread.”

Hans growled a little, but he took the hint, for her sake and the boy’s, and gradually found the practice so pleasant on its own account, that the washing of his hands and face became a daily process.

On his patron saint’s day (St. John, February 8), Mother Magdalis went a step further, and presented him with a clean suit of clothes, very humble but neat and sound, of her own making out of old hoards.  Not for holidays only, she said, but that he might change his clothes every day, after work, as her Berthold used.

“Dainty, burgher ways,” Hans called them, but he submitted, and Gottlieb was greatly comforted, and thought his old friend a long way advanced in his transformation into an angel.

So, between the sweetness of the boy’s temper and of his dear mother’s love which folded him close, the bitter was turned into sweet within him.

But Ursula, who heard the mocking of the boys with indignation, was not so wise in her consolations.

“Wicked, envious little devils!” said she.  “Never thou heed them, my lamb!  They would be glad enough, any of them, to be the master’s angel, or Dwarf Hans’ darling, for that matter, if they could.  It is nothing but mean envy and spite, my little prince, my little wonder; never thou heed them!”

And then the enemy crept unperceived into the child’s heart.

Was he indeed a little prince and a wonder, on his platform of gifts and goodness?  And were all those naughty boys far below him, in another sphere, hating him as the little devils in the mystery-plays seemed to hate and torment the saints?

Had the “raven” been sent to him, after all, as to the prophet of old, not only because he was hungry and pitied by God, but because he was good and a favorite of God?

It seemed clear he was something quite out of the common.  He seemed the favorite of every one, except those few envious, wicked boys.

The great ladies of the city entreated for him to come and sing at their feasts; and all their guests stopped in the midst of their eager talk to listen to him, and they gave him sweetmeats and praised him to the skies, and they offered him wine from their silver flagons, and when he refused it, as his mother bade him, they praised him more than ever, and once the host himself, the burgomaster, emptied the silver flagon of the wine he had refused, and told him to take it home to his mother and tell her she had a child whose dutifulness was worth more than all the silver in the city.

But when he told his mother this, instead of looking delighted, as he expected, she looked grave, and almost severe, and said: