They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half Italian, so common
in the Tyrol; some of the children were white and golden as lilies,
others were brown and brilliant as fresh-fallen chestnuts. The father
was a good man, but weak and weary with so many to find for and so
little to do it with. He worked at the salt-furnaces, and by that
gained a few florins; people said he would have worked better and kept
his family more easily if he had not loved his pipe and a draught of
ale too well; but this had only been said of him after his wife's
death, when trouble and perplexity had begun to dull a brain never too
vigorous, and to enfeeble further a character already too yielding. As
it was, the wolf often bayed at the door of the Strehla household,
without a wolf from the mountains coming down. Dorothea was one of
those maidens who almost work miracles, so far can their industry and
care and intelligence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single
loaf seem to swell into twenty. The children were always clean and
happy, and the table was seldom without its big pot of soup once a
day. Still, very poor they were, and Dorothea's heart ached with
shame, for she knew that their father's debts were many for flour and
meat and clothing. Or fuel to feed the big stove they had always
enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold
wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his
grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and
hapless, dreamy ways.
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