which he was proud enough.

Klaas was a farmer's boy. He had rye bread and fresh milk for breakfast.
At dinner time, beside cheese and bread, he was given a plate heaped
with boiled potatoes. Into these he first plunged a fork and then dipped
each round, white ball into a bowl of hot melted butter. Very quickly
then did potato and butter disappear "down the red lane." At supper, he
had bread and skim milk, left after the cream had been taken off, with a
saucer, to make butter. Twice a week the children enjoyed a bowl of
bonnyclabber or curds, with a little brown sugar sprinkled on the top.
But at every meal there was cheese, usually in thin slices, which the
boy thought not thick enough. When Klaas went to bed he usually fell
asleep as soon as his shock of yellow hair touched the pillow. In summer
time he slept till the birds began to sing, at dawn. In winter, when the
bed felt warm and Jack Frost was lively, he often heard the cows
talking, in their way, before he jumped out of his bag of straw, which
served for a mattress. The Van Bommels were not rich, but everything was
shining clean.

There was always plenty to eat at the Van Bommels' house. Stacks of rye
bread, a yard long and thicker than a man's arm, stood on end in the
corner of the cool, stone-lined basement. The loaves of dough were put
in the oven once a week. Baking time was a great event at the Van
Bommels' and no men-folks were allowed in the kitchen on that day,
unless they were called in to help. As for the milk-pails and pans,
filled or emptied, scrubbed or set in the sun every day to dry, and the
cheeses, piled up in the pantry, they seemed sometimes enough to feed a
small army.

But Klaas always wanted more cheese. In other ways, he was a good boy,