"What has the pounding of my feet to do with the shape of your letters, I should like to know?" answered Maggie. "I can't help doing it, at any rate; I must beat the time when father plays, it helps me on with my knitting. If you would only be more careful, you would write better. Look here, what a long piece I have knit in my stocking!"
With a rapid movement, she held her long blue stocking up immediately in front of her brother's face; but as she did so, she awkwardly gave a great push to his elbow, and so jostled his arm, that it drove the pen full of ink entirely across his copy-book, and spoiled the appearance of the whole page. Crimson with rage, the boy gave the little girl a violent box upon the ears. Maggie shrieked loudly, and tried to revenge herself in the same way. Thus a fierce battle began at the table, round which the children were engaged in their studies. Not far from it two fat, ruddy little boys were playing with the black house-cat. Conrad and Maggie had wrestled and struggled forward until they were close upon the little ones; Maggie stumbled over the cat, and fell upon her little brothers. The children screamed, the cat yelled, so that the baby in the cradle was waked up, and soon added his cries to the general uproar. Quite undisturbed by all this frightful tumult, Father Bopp stood tranquilly at the window, and practised a dance upon the clarionet.
He was a little, slender man, and blew with his cheeks puffed out into his instrument. His tailor-work, the signs of his daily occupation, hung upon the wall, between his fiddles and horns. He was so accustomed to the noise of the children, that he continued his practising without appearing in the least disturbed by their deafening din. As tranquil as the musician himself, as undisturbed by all that was going on in the dark, dirty room, a beautiful little boy of about five years old sat quietly at his feet. With his large, dark eyes fastened upon the face of the father, his bare legs doubled up under him, he supported himself, half reclining, upon his left hand, while with the right he beat the time lightly, but accurately, upon his naked knee. He was wretchedly clothed; his torn coat of dark-blue linsey was a great deal too short, and, as it had neither buttons nor hooks to keep it together, it gaped widely in front, exposing his breast and shoulders to view, whose soft forms shone in their warm brown tints. His dark, full curls fell uncombed and uncared for over his rounded forehead and blooming face.
"Potz tausend! Odds bodikins! What a noise you are making there!" called the mother from the adjoining kitchen. In the same moment she made her appearance at the smoky door. She was a stout, strong woman, her thick and coarse blond hair fell in uncombed masses from what had once been a black velvet cap, but which had now assumed a gray tint from age and constant wear. A gray petticoat, a long red jacket, a red and black plaid neck-handkerchief, and a blue cotton apron, completed the costume of the mother, whose clothing, as well as her full, red face, bore visible marks of the life of the kitchen. Armed with a broom, she sprang into the sitting-room, and brandished it over the heads of the children, who were still tumbling about upon the floor.
"Will you be quiet, you noisy brats?" she loudly cried. "Get up from the floor, instantly! What has happened? O, do quit that everlasting blowing upon the clarionet, man! It is impossible to hear one's own voice with such an incessant clatter! Which of you began it?"
"Conrad struck me!" screamed Maggie.
"Maggie pushed my elbow when I was writing, and I shall be kept in for it to-morrow!"
"They both fell over me, and the cat scratched me!"
"They hurt my foot!"
"They knocked me in the head!"