Trientje was in her cotton pinafore, with a straw hat on her head and a
wicker basket on her arm. Lowietje stood in his worn breeches and his
torn shirt; in his pocket he had a new climbing-cord. Each dragged
Poentje by one hand, Poentje who still went about in his little shirt
and, with his wide-straddling little bare legs, trotted on between
brother and sister.

They went along narrow, winding foot-paths, between the cornfields, high
as a man, through the flax-meadows and the yellow blinking
mustard-flower. The sun bit into Lowietje's bare head and sent the sweat
trickling down his cheeks.

They went always on, with their eyes fixed upon that thick crowd of blue
trees full of blithe green and of dark depths behind the farthermost
trunks.

Poentje became tired and let himself be dragged along by his hands. When
he began to cry, they sat down in the ditch beside the corn to rest.
Trientje opened her basket and they ate up all their bread-and-butter.
Near them, in the grass, ants crept in and out of a little hole. Lowietje
poked with a stick and the whole nest came crawling out. The children sat
looking to see all those beasties swarm about and run away with their
eggs.

All three stood up and went past the old mill, then through the meadow
and so, at last, they came to the wood and into the cool shade. On the
banks of the deep, hollowed path, it all stood thick as hail and black
with the brambleberries. Lowietje picked, never stopped picking, and put
them one by one in his mouth; and his nose and cheeks were smeared with