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 warned her, saying, “Don’t take them all, for then we won’t have any more,” she only laughed and said: “They always grow again; in a week there will be plenty more.”

If Mux looked a little timidly at the large cabbage heads, Esther said to him: “Don’t be afraid of them, Mux. If I cook cabbage, everybody else likes it so much that you won’t have to eat it at all, and you can take the potatoes which I serve with it.”

Mux often accompanied Esther to the kitchen, where he soon picked up a lot of useful knowledge. There was no pastry the exact recipe of which as well as how it tasted Mux could not tell. In this manner he lived through heavenly days.

They were no less heavenly for the other children. Dino and Cornelli had started the large undertaking of laying out Martha’s garden after their own plan. They were so busy inventing things and carrying them out that they could hardly ever be found.

Agnes struggled with Dino for first place in Cornelli’s affection, but Dino was always the victor. Cornelli never forgot that he had been