He had saved it from his supper in an impulse of generous pity for his little sister, who so often awoke, crying with hunger, and woke his poor mother, and would not let her go to sleep again.
He had thought how sweet it would be, when Lenichen awoke the next morning, to appear suddenly, as the angels do, at the side of the bed where she lay beside her mother, and say:
"Dear Lenichen! See, God has sent you this bit of bread as a Christmas gift."
For the next day was Christmas Eve.
This little plan made Gottlieb so happy that at first it felt as good to him as eating the bread.
But the happy thought, unhappily, did not long content the hungry animal part of him, which craved, in spite of him, to be filled; and, as the night went on, he was sorely tempted to eat the precious crust—his very own crust—himself.
"Perhaps it was ambitious of me, after all," he said to himself, "to want to seem like a blessed angel, a messenger of God, to Lenichen. Perhaps, too, it would not be true. Because, after all, it would not be exactly God who sent the crust, but only me."
And with the suggestion, the little hands which had often involuntarily felt for the crust, brought it to the hungry little mouth.
But at that moment it opportunely happened that his mother made a little moan in her sleep, which half awakened Lenichen, who murmured, sleepily, "Little mother, mother, bread!"
Whereupon, Gottlieb blushed at his own ungenerous intention, and resolutely pushed back the crust under the pillow. And then he thought it must certainly have been the devil who had tempted him to eat, and he tried to pray.