washed his face!"

Magdalis smiled, and hit on a plan for bringing this about. With some
difficulty she persuaded the old man to take his dinner every Sunday
and holiday with them, and she always set an ewer of water--and a
towel, relic of her old burgher life--by him, before the meal.

"We were a kind of Pharisees in our home," she said, "and except we
washed our hands, never ate bread."

Hans growled a little, but he took the hint, for her sake and the
boy's, and gradually found the practice so pleasant on its own account,
that the washing of his hands and face became a daily process.

On his patron saint's day (St. John, February 8), Mother Magdalis went
a step further, and presented him with a clean suit of clothes, very
humble but neat and sound, of her own making out of old hoards. Not for
holidays only, she said, but that he might change his clothes every
day, after work, as her Berthold used.

"Dainty, burgher ways," Hans called them, but he submitted, and
Gottlieb was greatly comforted, and thought his old friend a long way
advanced in his transformation into an angel.

So, between the sweetness of the boy's temper and of his dear mother's
love which folded him close, the bitter was turned into sweet within
him.

But Ursula, who heard the mocking of the boys with indignation, was
not so wise in her consolations.