The girl's smile faded when she mounted the narrow stairs and cast her first look around. Their cottage had been no fairy bower,
it is true; but the sunlight had shone into it, and green gardens and fields lay all about it. When, however, she saw her little mother sink down with a heavy sigh upon the dusty floor, she quickly recovered herself, threw her arms about the poor woman and carried her to a bench near the window where she could watch the sparrows in the top of the chestnut-tree. Then she began to talk so cheerfully that the mother took heart at last and only sighed softly now and then, as with tender eyes she watched the child busied in arranging the furniture in their new home.
By the next day the two rooms looked quite habitable. The young girl had gone early to the market and bought two cheap pots of flowers; she had brushed away the dust, had scrubbed the floors, and hung fresh curtains at the square windows before it was time to make the soup upon the little stove in the corner.
When Wenzel Kospoth came in at noon to ask how it fared with his fellow-tenants, his eyes opened wide with astonishment to find everything so neat and comfortable. He must needs stop for dinner, and found the frugal meal far more toothsome than the food which a neighbor had been wont to serve him in his shop. So it came about that the cobbler dined with them regularly, and the small sum which he paid helped them with the rent.
That she could not hope for much custom in her new home, the sensible woman knew well enough. She understood only peasant fashions; and for her medicinal skill there was no demand. In her despondency, she almost regretted that she had availed herself of Master Kospoth's offer. But here Gundula came to her mother's rescue. She had inherited her cleverness in womanly handiwork; and she soon apprenticed herself to a dressmaker, under whom she took great pains to learn the city fashions. She showed herself so quick and skillful that after a few months she was employed in the houses of well-to-do families.
In time, many a piece of work was entrusted to her to finish. These she took home to her mother, who became once more cheerful, now that her hands were no longer idle; and when, at the end of the year,
