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 “Oh, can’t we send them the rest of the cabbage?” Mux quickly suggested.

“Come and work on the embroidery I have started for you, Mux. We shall see who can beat to-day. Perhaps that will clear away your thoughts about the cabbage. Come and sit beside me, Mux.”

The mother put a little chair beside hers and placed the work in the boy’s nimble fingers. Now a race with stitches began, and in his zeal to beat his mother he at last forgot the subject that had troubled him so much.

The late evening had come and the children’s work for school was done. Mrs. Halm put the big mending basket away and took up her knitting. The time had come, when, clustering eagerly about their mother, the children told her all the troubles and joys of the day.

It was the hardest hour of the day for Mux, for it was his bedtime. His mother always took him by the hand, to lead him to bed, before she began to talk with the three elder children. Every evening he put up a fight, for the wily youngster always thought that by obstinate resistance he could break the rule. His mother,