"For mother, I have given you some well-roasted coffee," she said, "and
in the little bottle that is stoppered and tightly wrapped up there is
also some black coffee, better than mother usually makes over at your
house. Just let her taste it; it is a veritable medicine tonic, so
strong that one swallow of it will warm up the stomach, so that the body
will not grow cold on the coldest of winter days. The other things in
the pasteboard-box and those that are wrapped up in paper in the
knapsack you are to bring home without touching."
After having talked with the children a little while longer she bade
them go.
"Take good care, Sanna," she said, "that you don't get chilled, you
mustn't get overheated. And don't you run up along the meadows and under
the trees. Probably there will be some wind toward evening, and then you
must walk more slowly. Greet father and mother and wish them a right
merry Christmas."
Grandmother kissed both children on their cheeks and pushed them through
the door. Nevertheless she herself went along, accompanied them through
the garden, let them out by the back gate, closed it behind them, and
went back into the house.
The children walked past the cakes of ice beside grandfather's mill,
passed through the fields of Millsdorf, and turned upward toward the
meadows.
When they were passing along the heights where, as has been said, stood
scattered trees and clumps of bushes there fell, quite slowly, some few
snow-flakes.
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