Part 5 Summary

The winter days pass and finally it is Christmas Eve and Rosicky sits by the window mending clothes. Mary has managed to grow some Jerusalem cherry trees full of berries and the plants remind Rosicky of the two years he spent living in London when he was only eighteen. Rosicky had come to London to live with a cousin who had unfortunately left for America by the time Rosicky arrived. Starving and cold, the young Rosicky sleeps in doorways and lives despairingly until a chance encounter with a tailor who apprentices Rosicky. The tailor's wife is kind to Rosicky but the family is poor and Rosicky himself wonders if his own clothes won't soon fall off from dirt and wear.

Rosicky rouses himself from his reverie in preparation for the holiday meal with the family, which has gathered at the farmhouse. Rudolph laments...