"Grandmother's big cakes!" chuckled little Christof, who was five
years old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothing
else.

"What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be good?" murmured
Dorothea over the child's sunny head; for, however hard poverty
might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would
not find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her little
sister's socks.

"Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the
calf's life in June," said August; it was the twentieth time he
had told them so that month, he was so proud of it.

"And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and honey and a
barrel of flour; she always does," said Albrecht. Their Aunt Maila
had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes towards
Dorp Ampas.

"I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's crown," said
August; they always crowned Hirschvogel for Christmas with pine
boughs and ivy and mountain berries. The heat soon withered the
crown; but it was part of the religion of the day to them, as much
so as it was to cross themselves in church and raise their voices
in the "O Salutaris Hostia."

And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christ-night,
and one little voice piped loud against another's, and they were
as happy as though their stockings would be full of golden purses