But even before they had become regular customers she decided under her breath that they were “nice chillen;” and when she came to know them better her kind heart overflowed to them.

One morning as they smiled and nodded to her on the way to school, she called out and beckoned.

“Apples for the little baskets?”

“Not to-day,” answered Emilie.

She beckoned to them again with determination, and the children approached.

“We forgot to brush our teeth last night,” explained Franz, “so we haven’t any penny.”

“I forgot it,” said Emilie, “and Franz didn’t remind me, so we neither of us got it.  That’s the way Anna makes us remember.”

“Never you mind, honey, here’s apples for love,” replied the colored woman, holding up two rosy beauties.

The children looked at one another and shook their heads.

“Thank you,” said Emilie, “but we can’t.  Papa said the last time you gave them to us that if we ate your apples without paying for them we mustn’t come to visit you any more.”

“Now think o’ that!” exclaimed the apple woman when the children had gone on.  She was much touched and pleased to know that Franz and Emilie would rather come and sit and talk to her and listen to her stories than to eat her apples.

She was right; they were nice children; but they had their naughty times, and good old Anna was often greatly troubled by them.  She felt her responsibility of the whole family very deeply, and tried to talk no more German.  These children must grow up to be good Americans, and she must not hold them back.  It was very hard for the poor woman to remember always to speak English, and funny broken English it was; so that little Peter, hearing it all the time, had a baby talk of his own that was very comical and different from other children.  He talked about the “luckle horse” he played with, and the “boomps” he got when he fell down, and he was very brave and serious, as became a fat baby boy who had to take care of himself a great deal.

Anna was so busy cooking and mending for a family of five she was very glad of the hours when Mr. Wenzel worked at home at his desk and baby Peter could stay in the same room with him and play with his toys.

Mr. Wenzel was a kind father and longed as far as possible to fill the place of mother also to his children, who loved him dearly.  To little Peter he was all-powerful.  A kiss from papa soothed the hardest “boomp” that his many tumbles gave him; but even Peter realized that when papa was at his desk he was very busy indeed, and though any of the children might sit in the room with him, they must not speak unless it was absolutely necessary.

Emilie was now eight years old, and she might have helped her father and Anna more than she did; but she never thought of this.  She loved to read, especially fairy stories, and she often curled up on the sofa in her father’s room and read while Peter either played about the room with his toys, or went to papa’s desk and stood with his round eyes fixed on Mr. Wenzel’s face until the busy man would look up from his papers and ask:  “What does my Peter want?”