After this the Märchen-Frau finished the ballad alone, and the
conclusion was received with shouts of applause and laughter, that
would have considerably astonished the good father, could he have
heard them, and that did sometimes oblige the mother to call order
from the loft above, just for propriety's sake; for, in truth, the
good woman loved to hear them, and often hummed in with a chorus to
herself as she turned over the clothes among which she was busy.

At last, however, after having been for years the crowning enjoyment
of St. Nicholas's Day, the credit of the Märchen-Frau was doomed to
fade. The last reading had been rather a failure, not because the old
ballad-book was supplanted by a new one, or because the children had
outgrown its histories; perhaps--though they did not acknowledge
it--Friedrich was in some degree to blame.

His increasing knowledge, the long readings in the bookseller's shop,
which his brothers and sisters neither shared nor knew of, had given
him a feeling of contempt for the one book on which they feasted from
year to year; and his part, as Märchen-Frau, had been on this occasion
more remarkable for yawns than for anything else. The effect of this
failure was not confined to that day. Whenever the book was brought
out, there was the same feeling that the magic of it was gone, and
very greatly were the poor children disquieted by the fact.

At last, one summer's day, in the year of which we are writing, one of
the boys was struck, as he fancied, by a brilliant idea; and as
brilliant ideas on any subject are precious, he lost no time in
summoning a council of his brothers and sisters in the garden. It was
a half-holiday, and they soon came trooping round the great linden
tree--where the bees were already in full possession--and the youngest