Exactly why he should have chosen Amsterdam to begin his quest, is not so clear; but he must have had reason to hope that he might get news of Lady MacNairne and my (supposed) motor-boat here. Doubtless he will sooner or later come upon a clue. If he turns up at the Amstel to prosecute his inquiries, he may hear of Tibe, and of the two beautiful young ladies. Then he will put two and two together, and will be after us—as Starr's favorite expression is—"before we can say knife."

At present I have all the sensations of being a villain, with none of the advantages.



XIX

It seemed homelike to be on board "Lorelei" again, in my place at the wheel, with the two girls and the Chaperon in their deck-chairs close by. Starr had been meaning to make a sketch of the group under the awning, but the dread apparition of his aunt's husband had twisted his nerves like wires struck by lightning, and he could do nothing. His is essentially the artistic temperament, and he is a creature of moods, impish in some, poetic in others; an extraordinary fellow, like no one I ever saw, yet curiously fascinating, and I find myself growing oddly fond of him, in an elder-brotherly, protecting sort of way.

Even I have my moods sometimes, though I can hide them better than he can; and this morning I was in the wrong key for the idyllic peace and prim prettiness of Broek-in-Waterland. I should have liked better to be out on a meer in Friesland, in a stiff breeze; but since it had to be Broek, I made the best of it.

The canal leading to that sleepy little village, which seems to float on the water like a half-closed lily, is one of the prettiest in the Netherlands. Almost at once, after parting from Amsterdam, we turned out of the North Sea Canal; and the smoke and bustle of the port were left behind like a troubled dream. We lifted a veil of sunbright mist, and found ourselves in the country—a friendly country of wide spaces such as we passed through in motoring between Amersfoort and Spaakenberg; of mossy farmhouses and hayfields, grazing cows, and swallows skimming low over little side-canals carpeted with vegetation like a netting of green beads. But here the hay was not protected by the elevated roofs of thatch we had seen yesterday. It lay in loose heaps of yellowing grass, shining in the sun like giant birds' nests of woven gold; and all the low-lying landscape shimmered pale golden and filmy green, too sweet and fresh for the green of any other country save mine, in mid-July. Here and there a peasant in some striking costume, or a horse in a blue coat, made a spot of color in the pearl and primrose light, under clouds changeful as opal; and each separate, dainty picture of farmhouse, or lock, or group of flags and reeds had its double in the water, lying bright and clear as a painting under glass, until our vandal boat came to shiver picture after picture.

As we moved, our progress not only sent an advance wave racing along the dyke, but tossed up a procession of tiny rainbow fountains, as if we threw handfuls of sapphires and diamonds into the water in passing.

Sometimes we had glimpses of mysterious villages, a line of pink-and-green houses stretching along the canal banks below the level of the water, shielded by rows of trees trained, in the Dutch way, to grow flat and wide, screening the windows as an open fan screens the sparkling eyes of a woman who peeps behind its sticks.

These half-hidden dwelling-places inspired Starr to launch out in a disquisition upon some of the characteristics he has observed among my people.

"Funny thing," said Starr, "the Dutch are a queer mixture of reserve and curiosity. You don't see a town or village where the windows aren't covered with curtains, and protected by squares of blue netting. But though the beings behind those windows are so anxious to live in private, they're consumed with curiosity about what's going on outside. For fear of missing something, they stick up looking-glasses on the walls to tell them what happens in the street. 'Seeing, unseen,' is the motto that ought to be written over the house doors."

"The Lady of Shalott started the fashion," said Nell.

As we drew nearer to Broek-in-Waterland, the landscape, already fragrant with daintiness, began to tidy itself anew, out of deference to Broek's reputation. The smallest and rudest wooden houses on the canal banks had frilled their windows with stiff white curtains and tied them with ribbon. Railings had painted themselves blue or green, and smartened their tips with white. Even the rakes, hoes, and implements of labor had got themselves up in red and yellow, and green buckets had wide-open scarlet mouths.

As we walked to the village, after mooring "Lorelei" at the bridge, the girls laughed and chatted together, but involuntarily they hushed their voices on entering the green shadow of the little town under its slow-marching procession of great trees; and the spell of somnolent silence seized them.

I think no one coming into Broek-in-Waterland could escape that spell. There is no noise there. Even the trees whisper, and not the most badly brought up dog would dare to bark aloud.

"Have you noticed," Nell asked me softly, "that you never hear sounds in dreams? No matter how exciting things are, there's never any noise; everything seems to be acted in pantomime. Well, it's like that here. We're dreaming Broek-in-Waterland as we have other places."

"And dreaming each other, too?"

"I shouldn't wonder."

"Then I hope nothing will happen to wake me up."

Just then we arrived at a dream curiosity-shop which gave her an excuse not to answer.

On the edge of the town it stands, one of the first among the little old houses, which look as if they had been made to accommodate well-to-do dolls of a century or two ago. Modestly retired in a doll's garden, with an imitation stalactite grotto, and groups of miniature statues among box-tree animals, its door is always open to welcome visitors and allure them. Within, vague splashes of color against a dim background; blues that mean old Delft; yellow that means ancient brass; and all gleaming in the dusk with the strange values that flowers gain in twilight.

I knew that Nell and Phyllis and the Chaperon would not pass by, and they didn't.

There was a man inside, but he did not ask us to buy anything. He had the air of a host, pleased to show his treasures, and the Chaperon feared that I was playing some joke when I encouraged them to invade the quaint and pretty rooms.

"I don't believe it is a shop," said she. "It's just an eccentric little house, that belongs to somebody who's away—a dear old maiden lady, perhaps, a collector of antiques, for her own pleasure. This man's her caretaker."

"She's strayed into some other dream, maybe," suggested Nell. "She's lost her way, poor old dear, and can never find it again, to come back, so that's why the things are for sale—if they really are. But listen, all the clocks in the house are talking to each other about her. They expect her to come, and that's why they keep on ticking, through the years, to make the time seem short in passing; for some of them must have had their hundredth birthday, long, long ago."

"He's a faithful caretaker then, to keep everything in such good order," said Phyllis. "But perhaps he believes what the clocks are saying about the old lady coming back. He's got the sweetest little clean curtains at the windows, and this too adorable wall-bed is ready for her to hop into, and dream the right dream again."

"He'd be mobbed by other Broekites, if he didn't keep things clean," I answered. "You know, Broek-in-Waterland is supposed to be the cleanest place in the Netherlands, which is something of a boast, isn't it? The saying used to be that, if a leaf dropped off a tree, or a wisp of hay off a passing cart, and one of the inhabitants saw it, he ran out of his house and threw the dreadful thing into the canal."

"Let's scatter a few bits of paper," said Starr, "and see what would happen."

"I'm afraid they're not as observant or energetic as they used to be. I counted three straws on the bricks, coming up."

"What wouldn't I give to have lunch in this house, on that charming old mahogany table, with those Delft plates and pewter mugs," sighed Miss Rivers, her eyes traveling over the old furniture which, as she said, seems to be ready and waiting till the wrong dream shall break.

"I'm going to take you to lunch somewhere else," I told her. "But you can buy Delft plates and pewter mugs here for your own table, if you like."

Then some exchange and barter did take place; although Nell said it seemed cruel to buy anything and separate it from its old friends. One ought to apologize to the things that were left for tearing their companions away.

There was time to step into the nearest cheese factory, and to go on and see the old church, I said, if they didn't mind lunching late. Of course they did not; so we strolled into the show place of Broek, a large house where cows live in neat bedrooms carpeted with something which resembles grated cheese. The Chaperon suggested that, after all, it was nothing but sawdust, and probably she was right; nevertheless each little cubicle in the long row, with its curtained window and blue-white wall, looked pretty enough for a fastidious human being. We should have lingered looking at the cheeses and sniffing dairy smells, but suddenly a tidal wave of tourists from an excursion steamer swept in, swamped us, and swallowed Tibe. He was retrieved after a search, in the doorway of the curiosity-shop, whither he had wisely returned to await his friends, and we then went on past the meer with its deserted bandstand, to one of the few lovable churches left in my country.

It is whitewashed and bare, but somehow, instead of making it grim, the whiteness has given it a religious look. The old canopied rosewood pulpit makes you feel good, though not disagreeably good, and the brass-work is a joy.

"You've seen a comic opera cheese factory," said I, when we had left the church. "Now, I'll show you the real thing, and then you shall have lunch. It won't be conventional, but I think you'll like it."

"For heaven's sake let's drown our sorrows in cheese, or something else supporting, and soon, or we perish," said the Mariner. "Our blood will then be upon your head, and as it's blue, and you're brown, it won't be at all becoming."

At this, I hurried them on, and presently arrived at a red-brick house set in a little garden. The glass of the white-curtained windows, and the varnished woodwork of the door at which I knocked, glittered so intolerably that they hurt the eyes, and made one envy the Chaperon her blue glasses. It was a relief when the dazzling door flew back to disclose a dim interior, and a delightful old lady in a lace-covered gold helmet, a black dress, and an elaborate apron.

"Something to eat?" she echoed my demand. "But, mynheer, we have nothing which these ladies would fancy. For you two we could do well enough, for you are men, and young. What does it matter what you eat, if it is enough? These ladies will laugh at our fare."

"They'll laugh with pleasure," said I. "You can give us eggs, cheese, bread and butter, and coffee, can't you, and strawberries and cream, perhaps?"

"Yes, mynheer, and some fresh cake."

"Food for kings and queens, as you'll serve it, y'vrouw," I assured her; and we flocked into the hall.

"Would you like to show your friends how we make our cheese, while I get ready the food?" asked the dame. "If you would, I will send for my son to guide you, though you know it so well yourself, mynheer, you need no explanations."

Her son being one of the principal objects of interest at Wilhelminaberg, however, the visit would not be complete without his society, and his presence was commanded. Promptly he appeared, bringing with him a smell of clover, and milk, and new-made cheese; a young man with the long, clever nose, narrow blue eyes, and length of upper lip, which you can see on any canvas of an old Dutch master.

Wilhelminaberg is not a show place; few tourists find their way there, and it is never flooded by a wave of strangers; but if some of the stage effects are lacking, it is more interesting for that reason.

Starr was captivated with the cows' part of the house, divided from their human companions only by a door. He whipped out the sketch-block and small box of colors which he always carries, and began jotting down impressions. A dash of red for the painted brick walls, and of green for the mangers; a yellow blur for the mote-filled rays of sunshine streaming through the cows' white-curtained windows, and on the flower-pots adorning their window-sills; a trifle more elaboration for the carpet of sawdust stamped with an ornamental pattern, and the quaint design of the cupboard-beds for the stablemen in the wall opposite; a streak here and there for the cords which loop the cows' tails to nails in the ceiling; gorgeous spots of crimson and yellow for the piled cheeses. And in the adjoining room, the while our guide described in creditable English the process of cheese-making, Starr sketched him standing before his big blue press, printing out his molds with an odd, yellow reflection from the cheese cannonballs heaped on trays, shining up into the shrewd Dutch face. Then in came the young wife, with a child or two (pretty dark creatures like their mother, with the innocent brown eyes of calves), followed by grandmama in her gold helmet, to say that our meal was ready; and Starr induced them to stand for him, though they were reluctant and self-conscious, and it was by sheer fascination that he prevailed.



Never had any of the party except myself seen a room like that to which we were summoned for luncheon, and Starr could not eat until he had said in a "few words of paint" what he thought of its paneled walls, its shelves littered with quaint and foolish china, ostrich eggs, shells, model ships, and hundred-year-old toys; its ancient brass-handled chests of drawers, its extraordinary fireplace, and best of all, its white-curtained cupboard-beds; one for grandmama, with a kind of trapeze arrangement to help her rise; one for papa and mama, with an inner shelf like a nest for baby; and one with a fence for a parcel of children. The artist's cream-eggs grew cold while he worked, but it was worth the sacrifice, for the result was excellent, and Nell's admiration gave me, I'm ashamed to say, a qualm of jealousy. I have no such accomplishments with which to win her.

We sat in high chairs with pictures of ships painted on backs and arms, while we lunched off willow-patterned plates, drank delicious coffee out of cups with feet, and stirred it with antique silver spoons, small enough for children's playthings. Afterwards the old lady with the helmet, and the pretty daughter-in-law were persuaded to show their winter wardrobes, which consisted mostly of petticoats. There were dozens, some knitted of heavy wool, some quilted in elaborate patterns, and some of thick, fleecy cloth; but there was not one weighing less than three pounds.

"Do ask how many they wear at a time?" the Chaperon commanded, no doubt with a thought for her mysterious note-book, about which I often wonder.

"I wear eight, summer and winter," replied the old lady. "My daughter-in-law is of the younger generation, and does not put on more than six. Little Maria is allowed only four; it is better for children not to carry much weight."

The girls looked petrified. "What martyrdom!" exclaimed Nell. "Even the Duke of Alva couldn't have subjected Dutch women to much worse torture than that. Eight of these knitted and wadded petticoats in summer! It's being buried alive up to the waist. In the name of civilization, why do they do it?"

I passed on the question to the old lady. She and her daughter-in-law received it gravely, thought it over for a moment, and then replied——

"But we must do it, mynheer; it is the mode. It has always been the mode."

"Talk of slaves of fashion!" muttered Nell. "If you want to find them, don't look in London or Paris or New York, but among the peasantry of Holland!"

Not one of the three could recover from the shock. They seemed stunned, as if all the petticoats at once had fallen from the shelves onto their heads and overwhelmed them; and even when we had said good-by to Wilhelminaberg, they talked in hushed tones of what it must feel like to be clothed in eight petticoats. They would probably have gone on discussing the subject in all its phases, until we regained the boat, if something had not happened. It was just after we passed the bandstand in the meer, and Starr had wondered aloud if the inhabitants of Broek ever did revel so giddily and publicly as to come outside their gardens to hear music, when there was a loud splash, followed by a cry.

The splash was Tibe's, the cry his mistress's, and in an instant we were in a flutter, for the dog was in the lake.

Close to shore the water is coated over with lily-pads, mingling with a bright green, beady vegetation; and Tibe mistook it for a meadow. Standing at a considerable elevation on the road above, he leaped down with happy confidence, only to be deceived as many wiser than he have been, by appearances. Bulldogs have virtues all their own, but they are not spaniels; and there was despair in Tibe's brown eyes, as he threw one last look of appeal at his friends before disappearing under the green carpet.

Up he came in a second, covered with green beads, his black mouth choked with them. Although not a water-dog, instinct kept him afloat, and he began to swim awkwardly, forging farther from shore instead of nearer. In a moment he had tangled his legs among thick-growing, ropey stems of water-lilies, and frightened and confused at finding himself a prisoner, went down again under the green surface.

Meanwhile his mistress was half mad with fright, and would not listen to Starr's assurance that the dog was in no danger.

"He'll bob up serenely and swim close to us; then I'll hook my stick in his collar and pull him out," the Mariner said cheerfully; but she pushed him away, sobbing.

Now, I never could bear to see a woman cry, even a woman in blue spectacles; so I did not wait for Tibe to come up and recover presence of mind, as he probably would, but splashed down myself onto the green carpet.

The water hardly reached to my hips, so there was no bravery in the feat, and I felt a fool as I went wading out to the spot where, by this time, the dog's head had again appeared among the water-lily pads, the living image of a gargoyle. But as I hauled him out, with a word of encouragement, the poor chap's gratitude repaid me. Looking like a vert-de-gris statue of a dog, he licked such portions of me as he could reach with a green tongue, and blessed me with his beautiful eyes.

When I had him on terra firma we both shook ourselves, sending an emerald spray flying in all directions; and then abortive attempts were made to dry Tibe with the handkerchiefs of the united party. A few hurried "Thank you's" were all I got from the Chaperon at the time, but on board "Lorelei" she had something more to say.

Before starting, I had to go to my stateroom on "Waterspin" to change wet clothes for dry ones, and when I was ready to take up my part of skipper, no one was on deck save the Chaperon and Tibe—a subdued Tibe buttoned up in a child's cape, which his mistress insisted on buying in Amsterdam for him to wear in cold weather.

"My poor darling spattered the girls so much, that they're below taking off their frocks," she explained. "Mr. Starr's changing too, I think, but I waited to speak to you alone, although I am a sight. I have something particular to say."

I looked a question, and she went on. "I've always liked you, from the first. I saw you were the kind of man who could be trusted never to injure a woman, no matter what your opinion of her might be, and I'd have done you a good turn if it had come in my way; but now, after what I owe you this afternoon, I'm ready to go out of my way. You won't think I'm an interfering"—she hesitated a moment—"old thing, if I say I can guess why you are skipper—why you're on this trip at all. Now, if you wanted to be disagreeable I expect you could say that you know why I'm on board; but I don't believe you do want to be disagreeable, do you?"

"Certainly not," said I, laughing. "And even if I did, there's an old proverb which forbids the pot to call the kettle black."

"Oh, you and I and my dear nephew Ronny are pots and kettles together, the three of us; but our hearts are all right. And talking of hearts leads up to what I want to say."

"About my job as skipper?"

"Yes."

"You say you can guess why I took it. My idea is, that you guessed the first day on board."

"Why, of course I did. I saw which one of the girls it was, too, and noticed that something had gone wrong. That interested me, for I'm observant."

"You're 'a chiel amang us takkin notes.'"

"Think of a Dutchman quoting that! However, even peasants in Holland break into English and German. Why shouldn't a Jonkheer spout Burns? But let me get to my point. I haven't found out what the trouble is, but I know you must have sinned against the girl in some way, or done something tactless, which is worse, and made her angry. Or else she felt it was her duty to be angry, and has been living up to it ever since. Talk of the 'way of a man with a maid!' The way of a maid with a man is funnier and more subtle. Nell Van Buren is an adorable girl, but the more adorable a girl is, the more horried she can be."

"That is subtle."

"Why, of course. What else should it be? And the whole thing's been as good as a play to watch. I wished you well from the beginning, but I thought you capable of taking care of yourself."

"And now you've changed your mind?"

"I have, since yesterday. I'm sure something happened at Amsterdam in the morning, she was so different. What did you do to her?"

"I bullied her a little," I said.

"I thought as much. How could you?"

"I believed it would be good for her."

"So it was. But it wasn't good for you."

"She has been angelic since."

"That's the danger-signal. Poor man, you couldn't see it?"

"I was rather encouraged—though it seemed too delightful to be true," I admitted.

"Men are blind—especially when they're in love. You understand motor-boats better than you do girls."

"I dare say," I said meekly.

"She's so nice to you because she means to punish you by-and-by, for humbling her pride. I'm warning you, as a reward for saving my treasured lamb. If Tibe hadn't fallen into the water, and you hadn't pulled him out, perhaps I'd have left you to founder, and watched the fun. But now I say, take care. She's dangerous."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"How can I tell? Because I'm a woman, of course, and because I should act just the same—if I were young."

"Well, if you're right, what am I to do?"

"That's what I want to talk to you about. You must pretend to be tired of her."

"Good heavens!"

"She mustn't see that she has any power over you. She cares for you more than she lets herself think."

"I wish to goodness I could believe that."

"There's no use in your believing it. The thing is, to make her believe it—make her find it out, with a shock. And there's only one way of doing that."

"What?"

"Rouse her to jealousy."

I laughed bitterly. "Tell me to get her the moon."

"Flirt with Miss Rivers."

"My dear madam, you've proved to me that I'm a fool; but I'm neither cad nor hypocrite."

"Dear me, if that's the way you're going to take it, you're lost. Our dear Ronny will snatch her from under your nose, although she isn't a bit in love with him, and is with you, if you'd consent to shake her up a little."

"Starr is in love with them both."

"He was; or rather he was in love with being in love. But because you want Miss Van Buren, out of pure contrariness he thinks now that he wants her. Beware of her kindness. If you should be deluded by it into proposing, she'd send you about your business, and perhaps accept the other man because she was wretched, and didn't quite realize what was the matter."

"You're a gloomy prophetess," I said miserably.

"You won't take my advice?"

"No. I can't do that. I must do the best I can for myself in some other way."

"There isn't any other."

"I shall try."

"Well, promise me you won't propose for a fortnight, anyhow; or until I give you leave."

"We—all—always—do whatever you wish us to, extraordinary lady. I wonder why?"

"You must go on wondering. But in the meantime I will—"

"You will——"

"Try to save you—as you saved Tibe."



XX

The Mariner was restless when we landed at the strange town of Monnikendam, and had the air—or I imagined it—of expecting something. As we walked through the wide Hoog Straat, he glanced absent-mindedly at the rows of beautiful seventeenth century houses, as if he feared to see Sir Alec MacNairne spring from behind some ornamented, ancient door, to accuse him as a perjured villain. Even the exquisite church tower, which has the semblance of holding aloft a carved goblet of old silver, did not appeal to him as it would if he had not been preoccupied. And instead of laughing at the crowds of children who clattered after us, waking the clean and quiet streets with the ring of sabots, he let them get upon his nerves. The girls were amused, however, and said that the little pestering voices babbling broken English without sense or sequence, were like the voices of the story in the "Arabian Nights"—haunting voices which tempted you to turn round, although you had been warned beforehand that, if you did, you would lose your human form and become a stone.

Tibe was the real attraction; a sadder and wiser Tibe than the Tibe of an hour ago, so sad and so wise that he did not even attempt to insist upon a friendship with three snow-white kids which joined the procession of his admirers.

Starr walked beside his aunt, as if to protect her in case of need; and once or twice when I tried to attract their attention to some notable facade or doorway, they were absorbed in conversation, and might as well have been in New York as in Monnikendam on the Zuider Zee.

When I had shown the party what I thought best worth seeing, I had to leave them to their own resources, and go alone to the boat. Hendrik could not navigate "Lorelei" and her square-shouldered companion through the series of locks by which the canal pours its soul into the heart of the Zuider Zee.

It took me half an hour to do it, and when I had brought the two craft to the last of the sea-locks, the four people and the one dog were waiting for me, the most persistent of the children hovering in the distance.

"It's a bigger town than Broek-in-Waterland, but not as interesting," said the Chaperon, looking back disparagingly in the direction of Monnikendam, "nor as clean. I saw five bits of paper in as many streets, and a woman we met didn't appear at all inclined to commit suicide because she'd desecrated the pavement by upsetting a pail of milk: whereas in Broek she'd have been hauled off to prison. Each house in Broek looked like a model in jewelry, and the whole effect was like a presepio cut in pasteboard; but the Monnikendam houses are big enough for people to lie out straight in, when they go to bed, which seems quite commonplace. Except for that church tower, and a few doorways, and the wonderful costumes, and the shoe-shop where they sell nothing but sabots, I don't see why we bothered to stop at Monnikendam."

"I thought you were keen to visit the Dead Cities of the Zuider Zee," said I.

She stared at me as blankly as if she had not been prophesying my doom a little while ago.

"What's that got to do with Monnikendam?" she demanded.

"Only that Monnikendam is one of the Dead Cities; your first," I explained; but she cried incredulously——

"Monnikendam a Dead City of the Zuider Zee? Say it isn't true."

"I'm afraid it is."

"Oh, then I am disappointed! I thought we should come to the Dead Cities along the shore of the sea. That we'd see grass-grown streets lined with empty houses fallen half to pieces, and that perhaps if the water were clear we could look down, down, and spy steeples and ruined castles glimmering at the bottom. Won't some be like that?"

"Not one," I said. "They won't be any deader than Monnikendam, which was once the playground of merchant princes. I thought it was dead enough."

"Not to please me," she answered, with the air of a Madame Defarge in blue spectacles.

The Mariner came up before we had got into open sea. For the moment the three ladies were occupied in watching Tibe, who had fallen asleep in his cape, and was running with all his feet in some wild dream, flickering in every muscle, and wrinkling his black mug into alarming grimaces.

"Look here," said Starr, cautiously, "do you think we can paint out the name of 'Lorelei' when we get to Volendam, or must we engage a man to do it? Of course, if we could, it would cause less remark, especially if we did the job in the evening or early morning."

"What! you took that idea of mine seriously?" I asked.

"Certainly. It was a brilliant one."

"I doubt if Miss Van Buren would consent," said I.

"She has, already."

"By Jove! What excuse did you make for asking her?"

"I didn't ask her. What I did was to put the notion into darling Auntie's head. I knew after that, the thing was as good as done. I remarked in my vaguest way that it was a wonder some catastrophe hadn't happened to Tibe or other less important members of the party, on board a boat named 'Lorelei.' I didn't exactly say it was an unlucky name, but somehow or other she seemed to think so at the end of our conversation. Then she had a conversation with Miss Van Buren; and the consequence is that the sooner 'Lorelei's' name is changed to 'Mascotte' the better the owner will be pleased; and no questions asked."

"By Jove!" said I, again. There's something uncanny about the Mariner's adopted relative. I would give a good deal to know what she's planning to do for me; for if she has decided that my name had better be painted on or off any heart of her acquaintance, I have little doubt it will be.

Once out of the sluice, we were immediately in the Zuider Zee, whose yellow waves rocked "Lorelei" as if she were a cradle, causing the barge to wallow heavily in our wake. Should the weather be rough at any time when we have seaports to visit, "Lorelei" and her consort will have to lie in harbor, and the party must be satisfied to do the journey on a commonplace passenger-boat. But on such a day as this there was no danger, no excuse for seasickness, although I half expected the ladies to ask if we were safe. Apparently, however, the doubt did not enter their heads. So far we have had neither accident nor stoppage of any kind, and they have ceased to think it possible that anything can happen to the motor.

Marken, with its tall-spired church, soon appeared to our eyes, the closely grouped little island-town seeming to float on the waves as San Giorgio Maggiore does at Venice, in the sunset hour.

In spite of my sneers at the island theater and its performers, eagerness betrayed itself in the manner of my passengers, as we approached Marken, full petrol ahead.

"They see us," I announced, as we drew near enough to make out that a crowd of huge green and yellow mounds massed in the harbor were hay-boats. "They're congratulating themselves on an unexpected harvest, as the big audiences for which they cater every morning and afternoon in summer are gone for the day. When we arrive, there'll be a stage-setting and a stage-grouping, which would make a 'hit' for a first act in London."

Still nearer we came, and now we could see men and women and little children playing at unloading the hay with pitchforks from boats large and small. It was the prettiest sight imaginable, and one felt that there ought to be an accompaniment of light music from a hidden orchestra.

The men were dressed in black and dark blue jerseys, or long jackets with silver buttons, and enormously loose trousers, each leg of which gave the effect of a half-deflated balloon. At their brown throats glittered knobs of silver or gold, and there was another lightning-flash of precious metal at the waist. Their hair was cut straight across the forehead, over the ears and at the back of the neck, as if the barber had clapped on a bowl and trimmed round it; and from under the brims of impudent looking caps, glowed narrow, defiant blue eyes.

But though the men are well enough as pictures, it is the women and children of Marken who have made the fortune of the little island as a show place; and to-day they were at their best, raking the golden hay, their yellow hair, their brilliant complexions, and still more brilliant costumes dazzling in the afternoon sunlight.

We landed, and nobody appeared to pay the slightest attention to us. That is part of the daily play; but I was the only one who knew this, and seeing these charming, wonderful creatures peacefully pursuing their pastoral occupations as if there were no stranger eyes to stare, I was reproached for my base insinuations.

"How could you call them 'sharpers'?" cried Phyllis. "They're loves—darlings. I could kiss every one of them. They have the most angelic faces, and the children—why, they're cherubs."

It was true. The picture was idyllic, if slightly sensational in coloring. There was scarcely a woman who was not pretty; and a female thing must be plain indeed not to look charming in the gorgeous costume of Marken. The snow-and-rose complexions, the sky-blue eyes, the golden fringe, and two long yellow curls, one on either side the face, falling to the breast from under tight-fitting mob caps covered with lace; the short, very full blue and black skirts; the richly embroidered bodices, brilliant as the breast of a parrot; the filmy fichus and white sleeves; the black sabots with painted wreaths of roses, turned the little harbor of Marken into a rare flower-garden. The expressions of the fair faces were beautifully mild, also, and it was not strange to hear Miss Rivers pronounce the women angels and the children cherubs.

The group at the hay-boats formed the chorus; but we had not been on land for many minutes before the principal characters in the play began to appear. A young girl, who might be called the leading lady, came tripping down to the harbor with a tiny child hanging to each hand. All three were apparently dressed alike, in rich embroideries and full skirts to their ankles, worn over an incredible number of petticoats; but I could tell by a small rosette on the cap of the middle child that it was a boy.

The trio approached, smiling seraphically; and it goes without saying that the three ladies began petting the two fantastic babes.

"How do you do? You like see inside a Marken house?" asked the pretty girl, speaking English with the voice of a young siren.

They all answered that they would be delighted.

"I show my home. You come with me."

Starr and I were bidden to follow, and I would not spoil sport by letting it be known to the actress that one member of the audience was a Dutchman. The charming creature with her two bobbing golden curls was knitting a stocking almost as long as her little brother, and as she turned to show the way, she never for an instant ceased work. Toiling after her, we walked along the dyke where the fishermen's houses stand in flows, hoisted on poles like storks' nests, out of the reach of inundations.

Needles glittering, our guide led us to the foot of a steep flight of steps belonging to a house like all the other houses; so much like, that it would seem we were being ushered into an ordinary specimen of a fisher-family dwelling; but I knew better.

Now the scene changed. The first stage-setting was Marken Harbor with the hay-boats. For the second act we had the interior of the honest fisherman's cottage. And what an interior it was!

In all Europe there is no such place as Marken, no such dresses, no such golden curls, no such rooms as these into which a coquettishly capped mother with a marvelous doll of a baby in her arms, was sweetly inviting us.

"Only think of these fisher-folk living in such wonderful little jewel-caskets of houses!" exclaimed Phyllis, to be echoed by murmurs of admiration from the others. But I said nothing. And it really was like wandering into a fairy picture-book. It was impossible to imagine any other house resembling this, unless that of Silverhair's Three Bears.

The polished green walls were almost hidden with brightly colored Dutch placks, and shelves covered with little useless ornaments. The chairs were yellow, with roses painted over them, and varnished till they twinkled. The family beds in the wall had white curtains as crisp as new banknotes, and white knitted coverlets with wool-lace ruffles; but as the green doors of the beds were kept shut for the day, you would not have suspected the elegance within, had not the Siren opened them for inspection. Under the door of each bed was placed a little red bench, festooned with painted flowers; and as there were nine in the family and only four beds, counting the little one underneath for the babies, the disposition of forces at night did not bear thinking of.

All the tables had crocheted white covers, and were decked with vases and fresh flowers, glittering brass and pewter things, and gay old china. But it was the next room—a small one adjoining the big living-room—which roused the highest admiration. There was not much furniture, but up to the low ceiling the walls were concealed by shelves laden with gorgeously painted wooden boxes, little and big. They were of all colors and all brightly varnished. Some were plain blue, or green, or crimson; others had Dutch or Japanese scenery painted on their sides, and the largest could not have been more than a foot and a half long, by eight inches in height.

"This must be where they keep their cake and bread, and kitchen stores," said Miss Rivers; but with a smile the Siren began to open the boxes.

Instead of sugar and spices they contained the family wardrobe; folded neck-handkerchiefs in great variety; little embroidered jackets for the children; lace-covered caps; bodices, and even—in the largest boxes—petticoats.

The ladies, and Starr also, were charmed with everything, especially the dark, secretive loft, as full of suspended fishing nets as Bluebeard's closet was of wives. They had never seen such a distracting place as Marken, or such kind and pretty people. It was nearly an hour before it occurred to them that they had better say good-by, and by that time they knew the whole history of the interesting family.

They shook hands with each one of the nine, including the baby, patted the cat and then lingered outside, taking photographs. Some of the neighbors—young women and girls, with dimples in the roses of their cheeks—drew nearer, as if lured by admiration of the ladies. Nell and Phyllis, seeing them, beckoned, and the fair creatures obeyed the summons with an appearance of shyness. They too, were photographed; and after many politenesses had been exchanged, Starr came to ask if I thought the dear things' feelings would be hurt by a small offering of money.

"They may, and probably will be—if the offering is small," said I, dryly.

"What are you insinuating?" exclaimed Nell.

Meanwhile the Siren, her sisters and brothers, and a number of handsome friends of her own age, pinned wary eyes upon us. The dimples were in abeyance, for the guileless angels guessed the subject of conversation, and were preparing for eventualities.

"I don't think they'll refuse money," I said. "In fact, they expect it."

"How much ought we to give?" asked Starr.

"Whatever you have handy, and whatever you think it's worth," said I, exploring my pockets for silver.

"I suppose the family would be delighted with the gulden," suggested Phyllis. "We might hand one child another, to divide among her little friends, and buy them sweets."

"You can try that, and see if they thank you," I replied.

"Why, of course they will," said the Chaperon. "It's easy to see that they have lovely dispositions, except the little boy who was afraid of Tibe, just because he tried in play to bite off the button on the back of his cap."

I stood still and watched the others reviewing their change, putting their bits of silver together to make up the sum decided upon, as small money is always at a premium. I did not add my mite to the fund, for I knew what would happen in the end.

Finally, Phyllis was chosen as emissary for the party.

"Good-by again," she said sweetly to our late guide. "Here's something for your little brothers and sisters to remember us by; and will you ask your companions to buy themselves some sweets with the rest?"

But in a second the Siren was transformed into a harpy. Her blue eyes turned to steel, and shot lightning. The children, understanding the situation, stood by looking like little sharks, and the handsome friends suddenly assumed the air of fierce wild birds in the Zoo, just tame enough to eat out of your hand if you offer what they like, but hating and scorning you in their cold hearts—the bright-plumaged things; ready to bite your finger to the bone, should you tease instead of feed them.

Our guide held up a hand with all her fingers spread out. "Five! Five!" she demanded shrilly. "Every one of you give one gulden. All this you gave is to my friends. Not enough for me. I have more. I always have more. One gulden every person."

"Nonsense," said I in Dutch. "Here's another gulden. Take that and go away. It's twice too much for you."

I flung her the money, and she clutched it; but she had not finished with us yet, nor had the others. Surprised and horrified at the sudden change in the pink and white angels, the ladies turned away, and hurried toward the boat. For an instant the creatures were abashed by my knowledge of Dutch, but it was only for an instant. The mother of nine, standing in the doorway of the green bandbox house, baby in arms, shrieked encouragement to her daughter. The Siren clattered after us with angrily ringing sabots, raging for money; the children cried; the friends shouted frank criticisms of our features, our hats, our manners. I would have gone away without rewarding their blackmail with another penny; but in desperation Starr turned and dashed four or five gulden at the crowd. The coins rolled, and the bright beings swooped, more than ever like a flock of gaudy, savage birds in their greed.

Thus we left them, and I saw that the ladies were thankful to be safe aboard "Lorelei" again.

"Fiends!" gasped the Chaperon, gazing shoreward in a kind of evil fascination. "And we called them angels and cherubs! I think you are good, Jonkheer, not to say, 'I told you so.'"

"They're terrible—beautiful and terrible," said Starr, "like figures that have been brought to life and have sprung at you out of a picture, to suck your blood—in answer to some wicked wish, that you regret the minute it's uttered."

"It was a shock to be undeceived, just at the last!" sighed Phyllis. "My nerves are quite upset."

"I shall dream of them to-night," said Nell; "so don't be surprised, everybody, if you hear screams in the dark hours. Still, I'm glad we went; I wouldn't have missed it."

"Nor I," added the Chaperon. "I feel as if we'd paid a visit to some village of the Orient, and been repulsed by savages with great slaughter. And—I wasn't going to mention it if they'd stayed nice, it would have seemed so treacherous; but did you notice, in that wonderful little waxwork house, there was no visible place to wash?"

"They don't wash," said I, "except their hands and faces. Most Dutch peasants consider bathing a dirty habit. They say they are clean, and so, of course, they don't need to bathe."

"That makes them seem more like birds than ever," exclaimed Nell; "their clothes are only plumage. I think of them as real people living real lives. It's true, Marken's a theater, three thousand meters long and a thousand meters wide, and you pay the actors for your seats. The harbor itself isn't half as picturesque as Spaakenberg, with its crowding masts and brown haze of fishing-nets; but the people are worth paying for."

"Tourists like ourselves have spoiled them; they were genuine once," I said. "Probably Spaakenberg, which is so unsophisticated now, will be like Marken one day; and even at Volendam, though the people have kept their heads (which shows they have a sense of humor), they're not unaware of their artistic value.

"They look down on the islanders as theatrical; but it's partly jealousy. Marken has a history, you know; it was once connected with the mainland, but that was as long ago as the thirteenth century, and ever since the inhabitants have prided themselves on their old customs and costumes. They're proud of the length of time they've dared to be Protestant; and no Marken man would dream of crossing to Papist Volendam for a wife, though Volendam's celebrated for beautiful girls. Nor would any of the 'fierce, tropical birds,' as you call them, exchange their island roost for the mainland, although Marken, in times of flood, is a most uncomfortable perch, and the birds have to go about in boats. But here we come to Volendam, and you'll be able to make up your mind which of the two fishing-villages is more interesting."

We had crossed the short expanse of sea, and passing a small lighthouse were entering a square harbor lined with fishing-boats. Stoutly built, solid fishing-boats they were, meant for stormy weather; and their metal pennons, which could never droop in deadest calm, flew bravely, all in the same direction, like flags in a company of lances in an old Froissart picture.

"Is Volendam celebrated for tall men as well as beautiful girls?" asked Nell, as we drew near enough to see figures moving. "There are several there, but one is almost the tallest man I ever saw—except my cousin Robert."

"He looks singularly like your cousin Robert," added Starr, not too joyously.

"I think it is your cousin Robert," said I.

"I'm sure it is your cousin Robert," murmured Miss Rivers.

"But why is your cousin Robert here?" inquired the Chaperon. "Could he have known you were coming?"

"I didn't write to him," said Nell.

"I didn't," said I.

Nobody else spoke; but Miss Rivers blushed.



PHYLLIS RIVERS' POINT OF VIEW



XXI

I wrote to Mr. van Buren because he asked me to. He never approved of the trip, and he said that he would be much obliged if I'd drop him a line every few days to keep him from worrying about Nell.

I didn't mention the conversation to her, as she would be sure to think it nonsense, since he lived without hearing about her welfare for twenty years, and never gave himself a moment's anxiety. But, of course, that was different. She is in his country now, and he feels in a way responsible for her, as if he were a guardian; only he can't make her do things, because he has no legal rights. Besides, he is young—not more than five or six years older than she is—but I wish I had such a guardian. Instead of going against his advice, I would obey, and even ask for it.

Mr. van Buren is the wisest young man I ever met, as well as the best looking, and I am vexed with Nell because she treats him as if he were a big school-boy. To make up for her ingratitude—I'm afraid it amounts to that—I have tried to show that I appreciate his kindness. As he's engaged, I can be nice without danger of his fancying that I'm flirting; and the poor fellow has seemed pleased with the few little things I've been able to do by way of expressing our thanks. I wish I could believe that the girl he's going to marry is good enough for him, but she is so plain, and seems to have rather an uncertain temper. Nell says she is a "little cat," but I should be sorry to call any girl such a name, though I've known many cats better looking and more agreeable than she.

I have always been brought up to think it rather rude to send postcards, unless they are picture ones for people to put in their albums; and of course it would be silly flooding Mr. van Buren with pictures of places he has seen dozens of times, so when I have written to him, I felt obliged to write regular letters.

I meant to scribble a line or two; but Holland is so fascinating that I have found myself running on about it, and Mr. van Buren has seemed grateful because it's his native land, and the places he likes best have turned out to be my favorites. In that way we have happened to write each other quite long letters, almost every day, for he has wanted to tell me I must be sure to see so and so, or do so and so, and I have had to answer that I have seen it or done it, and liked it as much as he thought I would.

If our trip could be improved it would be by having Mr. van Buren with us; but naturally that's impossible, as he's a man of affairs, and Freule Menela van der Windt would hardly sympathize with his kind wish to take care of his cousin, if he carried it so far as to leave her for any length of time, simply on account of Nell. As it is, his letters, and exchanging ideas with him, have been a pleasure to me, and I should have liked to share it with Nell—as we always have shared everything—if I hadn't been afraid she would laugh. Her cousin is too fine a fellow to be laughed at, so I have protected him by keeping our correspondence to myself.

I didn't want to come to Holland, as it seemed such a terrifying adventure for Nell and me to rush away from England and go darting about in a motor-boat; and so horribly extravagant to spend all the money poor Captain Noble left, in enjoying ourselves for a few weeks. However, it was to be, and there is something about Holland which appeals to me more than I dreamed any country except England could. I loved it almost from the minute we landed; but when you like any person in a foreign place it makes you like the place itself better.

I do think Holland is the most complete little country imaginable. While you are in it, it feels like the whole world, because you appear to be in the very middle of the world; and, when you look over the wide, flat spaces, you think that your eyes reach to the end of everything.

And then, all you see is so characteristic of Holland, even the sunrises and sunsets. Nothing that you find in Holland could be in its right place anywhere else on earth; but perhaps one can hardly say that Holland is on earth. Now I've got to know the "Hollow Land" (as Jonkheer Brederode often calls it), I think if I were kidnapped from England, taken up in a balloon, and dropped down here, even in a town I'd never seen, and without any canals, I should say, the minute I opened my eyes and found my breath, "Why, I'm in dear little Holland."

I should like to be here in winter. Mr. van Buren says if we'll come he'll teach me to skate; and, according to Jonkheer Brederode, he is a "champion long-distance skater." But then Mr. van Buren told me the same thing about Jonkheer Brederode. They are great friends. And talking about the Jonkheer, I don't know what to make of him lately.

I believed at first that he was in love with Nell, and had got himself asked on board "Lorelei" so that he might have the chance of knowing her better. She had the same impression, I think, though she never said so to me, and she was very angry about something Freule Menela told us. It seems there was a bet, I don't know exactly about what, except that Nell was concerned in it, and Mr. van Buren mentioned it to his fiancee. She oughtn't to have repeated it to us, but she did, and gave the impression that Jonkheer Brederode was a tremendous flirt, who fancied himself irresistible with women. She warned us both that if he won his bet, and contrived to meet us again, we weren't to be carried away by any signs of admiration on his part, for it was just his way, and he would be too pleased if we showed ourselves flattered.

This made Nell furious, and she said that in her opinion Jonkheer Brederode ought to be flattered if we were in the least nice to him, but she for one didn't intend to be.

I was a little prejudiced against him, too, although I admired him very much when I saw him in the Prinzenhof at Delft, and afterwards at the Concours Hippique. I thought Nell might, in any case, be grateful to him for saving her when the bathing-machine horse ran away with her into the sea.

I didn't tell Mr. van Buren what Freule Menela said, for it would have been mean, as he might have felt vexed with her. But for his sake, as Jonkheer Brederode is such a hero in his eyes, I determined if ever we saw the Jonkheer again I wouldn't judge him too severely, and would give him the benefit of the doubt as long as I could.

It was a surprise, though, to find that he was the "friend" Mr. Starr had got as skipper, when the real skipper—the professional one—failed at the last moment.

Naturally, I remembered instantly about the bet, which somehow concerned his being introduced to Nell within a certain length of time—so Freule Menela said—and I couldn't help thinking it was impertinent, winning it in such a way on Nell's own boat.

However, Nell was so horrid to him from the first minute, I grew sorry for the poor fellow, and he took her snubs like a combination of saint and gentleman. The more I saw of him the more I began to feel that Freule Menela van der Windt must have done him an injustice, at least in some of the things she told us.

I try to keep watch over my temper always, and I hope it isn't too bad; yet I'm certain that in Jonkheer Brederode's place I couldn't have endured Nell's behavior, but would have stopped being skipper the second day out, even if I left a whole party of inoffensive people stranded. Instead of leaving us in the lurch after undertaking to act as skipper, however, he has worked for us like a Trojan. Not only has he been skipper, but guide, philosopher and friend—to say nothing of chauffeur on shore, and "general provider" of motor-cars, carriages, surprise-dinners, flowers, and fruit on board the boat.

The trip would have been comparatively tame, if it hadn't been for him, as none of the rest of us know anything about Holland, and he knows everything. No trouble has seemed too much for him, if it could add in any way to our happiness; and I thought it was all for Nell.

He looked at her so wistfully sometimes, and such a dark red came up to his forehead when she said anything particularly sarcastic or snubbing, that even if he deserved it I couldn't bear to see him treated so, while he was doing everything for our pleasure. So I tried to be nice to him, just as I have to Mr. van Buren; and, oddly enough, both times with the same motive—to make up for Nell's naughtiness.

I could see that the Jonkheer was grateful, and liked me a little; but the night Mr. van Buren met us at Volendam so unexpectedly Lady MacNairne gave Nell and me both quite a shock. She said she had it on very good authority that it was entirely a mistake about Jonkheer Brederode being in love with Nell. Perhaps he had wished to blind people by making them think so, but it was really for my sake he had suggested to his friend, Mr. Starr, that he should be skipper of "Lorelei."

"I won't go so far as to say," Lady MacNairne went on, "that he's actually in love with Phyllis" (she calls us "Phyllis" and "Nell" now), "but he was so much taken that he wished to make her acquaintance. At present it entirely rests with Phyllis whether he goes on to fall in love or stops at admiration."

She said this before Nell; and although Nell has behaved so hatefully to him (except for the last three or four days, when she has been nicer), she didn't look as much relieved as I should in her place. She went very pink, and then very pale, with anger at Lady MacNairne for talking on such a subject, she explained afterwards. But at the time she didn't show any resentment against Lady MacNairne. She only laughed and said, "Dear me, how interesting. What shall you do about it, Phil?"

"I shall show him that I am his friend," I answered decidedly. "I like and admire him, and I hope I shall keep his friendship always."

"That's a pretty beginning to what may be a pretty romance, isn't it, Tibe, darling?" asked Lady MacNairne.

I tried not to blush, but usually the more you try not to blush the more you do. It was so with me then, just as it was when we were coming into harbor at Volendam, and everybody said to Nell, "There is your cousin Robert!" or "Why is your cousin Robert here?"

I was glad to stoop down and pat Tibe, who is the nicest dog I ever knew. It's true, as Nell says, he is "geared ridiculously low"; and having such a short nose and stick out lower jaw, when he wants to eat or smell things, he has practically to stand on his head; also he can never see anything that goes on under his chin. She says, too, that when he's troubled, and a lot of lines meet together at one point in the middle of his forehead, his face looks exactly like Clapham Junction; and so it does. Nevertheless, he's beautiful, and has the sort of features Old Masters gave dogs in pictures, features more like those of people than animals, and a human expression in the eyes.



It is odd, Nell and I used to tell each other every thought we had, and we talked over all the people we knew; but now, though I think a good deal about Jonkheer Brederode, and wonder how he really does feel toward us both, I never speak about him to Nell when I can avoid it, and she never mentions his name to me.

I don't know what happened to make her suddenly nice to him at Amsterdam, but something did, and she is nice still, only her manner is different somehow. I can hardly tell what the difference is, but it is there. At first, when we went to Spaakenberg and the other places, before Lady MacNairne said that thing, she was agreeable to the Jonkheer in a brilliant, bewitching, coquettish sort of way, as though she wished after all to attract him. But since that evening at the Hotel Spaander, in Volendam, she has been quite subdued. Jonkheer Brederode is quiet and rather distant, too, and sometimes I think he speaks to Nell coldly, as if he distrusted such shy signs of friendliness as she still shows.

Now, it seems to me that he and Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr are three friends worth having, not just the accidental sort of friends ("friendines" Nell calls that kind) who happen to be your friends because you were thrown with them somewhere, and you would not miss them dreadfully if by-and-by you drifted apart. They seem ones you were destined to meet, just as much as you are destined to be born, and to die; friends intended to be in your life and never go out of it. I scarcely knew in the beginning of our acquaintance which of the three I liked best; and now that I do know, I'm equally nice to them all, because one should do as one would be done by, and I love to have people nice to me.

Mr. van Buren has been with us the last two days, and I can see that he watches his friend and me, if we chance to be together. I should like to know if he, too, has the idea that Jonkheer Brederode cares about me, and, if so, whether he wonders how it's possible for any man to admire me more than Nell, who is so beautiful and brilliant and amusing? I can't help being flattered that such an interesting person as the Jonkheer should like my society better than Nell's, though I can hardly believe it's true. But somehow it would be nice to have Mr. van Buren believe it, as then he would be obliged to think me quite a fascinating girl, even though it probably wouldn't have occurred to him before—being engaged and so on—to regard me in that light of his own accord.

I should love to talk to Nell about all this in the sweet old way we used to have, and I do miss a confidante. Lady MacNairne is a most wonderful little woman, who manages every one of us, and we would do anything to please her; yet I should never dream of confiding in her. I don't know why, unless it's because she's all blue spectacles and gray hair. And if you never can see what people are thinking about behind their glasses, whether they're sighing over your troubles or laughing, how can you tell them sacred things about yourself?

Sometimes I think it a pity that Mr. Starr is a man. If only he were a girl he would be the most delightful person to have for a confidant. In spite of his impish moods, which make him seem often like an "elfin boy," as Jonkheer Brederode says, he's extraordinarily sympathetic. I feel that he understands Nell and me thoroughly, and as he is good to look at, and clever and fascinating in his manner when he chooses, I wonder why neither of us has fallen in love with him. But very likely Nell has. If she hasn't she has been flirting with him horribly.



XXII

It was like finding an old friend to see Mr. van Buren waiting to meet us at quaint little Volendam. He explained that Freule Menela had gone to Brussels to pay a visit; so, hearing from me when we would arrive, he ran out to inquire how his cousin was getting on. When his fiancee came back, he said, he would bring her and his sisters to see us.

Our first sight of Volendam was at sunset. Everything seemed so beautiful, and I felt so happy walking up to the hotel where we were to spend the night, that I should have liked to sing. Great clouds had boiled up out of the west; but underneath, a wonderful, almost supernatural light streamed over the sea. The sky was indigo, and the water a sullen lead color; but along the horizon blazed a belt of gold, and the sails on a fleet of fishing-boats were scarlet, like a bed of red geraniums blooming in the sea.

It was in this strange light that we walked from the harbor up the main street of the village, which is a long dyke of black Norwegian granite, protecting little pointed-roofed houses, the lower stories of a sober color, the upper ones with the peaked gables pea-green or blue, and the sabots of the family lying on the door-steps. Here and there in a window were a few bits of gaudy china for sale, or a sabot over a door as the sign of a shoe-shop; but we hardly looked at the houses, so interesting were their inmates, who seemed to be all in the street.

Along the dyke squatted a double row of men, old and young—mostly old; but all as brown as if they had been carved out of oak. Every one had a tight-fitting jersey and enormously baggy trousers, like those other men round the corner of the Zuider Zee at Marken. But at Marken the jerseys were dark and here of the most wonderful crimson; the new ones the shade of a Jacqueminot rose, the faded ones like the lovely roses which Nell calls "American beauties."

There they sat, tailor-fashion, with their legs crossed and their cloth or fur caps tilted over their eyes as they smoked (very handsome, bold eyes, some of them!) and, passing up and down, up and down in front of the row as if in review, with a musical clatter of sabots, bands of women, lovely girls, and charming little buttons of children.

Nell and I admired the costumes more than at Marken, though they're not as striking, only innocently pretty. But I can't imagine anything more becoming than the transparent white caps that fold back and flare out over the ears like a soaring bird's wings. Perhaps it was partly the effect of the light, but the young girls in their straight dark bodices, with flowered handkerchief-chemisettes, full blue skirts—pieced with pale-tinted stuff from waist to hips—and those flying, winged caps, looked angelic.

They walked with their arms round each other's waists, or else they knitted with gleaming needles. Quite toddling creatures had blue yokes over their shoulders, and carried splashing pails of water as big as themselves, or they had round tots of babies tucked under their arms. But whatever they were doing—men, women, girls, boys, and babies—all stopped doing it instantly when they spied Tibe. I don't believe they knew he was a dog; and though he has invariably had a succes fou wherever we have been, I never saw people so mad about him as at Volendam.

The Jonkheer says there are nearly three thousand inhabitants, and half of them were after Tibe on the dyke as we walked toward the hotel. The news of him seemed to fly, as they say tidings travel through the Indian bazaars. Faces appeared in windows; then quaint figures popped out of doors, and Tibe was actually mobbed. A procession trailed after him, shouting, laughing, calling.

Tibe was flattered at first, and preened himself for admiration; but presently he became worried, then disgusted, and ran before the storm of voices and wooden shoes. We were all glad to get him into the hotel.

Such a quaint hotel, with incredibly neat, box-like rooms, whose varnished, green wooden walls you could use for mirrors. I didn't know that it was famous, but it seems that it is; also the landlord and his many daughters. Every artist who has ever come to Volendam has painted a picture for the big room which you enter as you walk in from the street, and I saw half a dozen which I should love to own.

It was fun dining out-of-doors on a big, covered balcony looking over the Zuider Zee, and seeing the horizon populous with fishing-boats. In the falling dusk they looked like the flitting figures of tall, graceful ladies moving together hand in hand, with flowing skirts; some in gossiping knots, others hovering proudly apart in pairs like princesses.

It is wonderful how our chaperon makes friends with people, and gets them to do as she likes. If she were young and pretty it wouldn't be strange—at least, where men are concerned; but though her complexion (what one can see of it) looks fresh, if pale, and she has no hollows or wrinkles, her hair is gray, and she wears blue spectacles, with only a bit of face really visible. One hardly knows what she does look like. Nevertheless, the men of our party are her slaves; and it is the same at hotels. If at first landlords say Tibe can't live in the house, the next minute, when she has wheedled a little, they are patting his head, calling him "good dog," and telling his mistress that they will make an exception in his case.

The morning after we arrived in Volendam I got up early, because Mr. van Buren offered to show me the place if I cared to take a walk. It was only half-past eight when we strolled out of the hotel, and the first person I met was Lady MacNairne. She had been walking, and was on her way back, looking like the Old Woman in the Shoe, surrounded by children of all sizes. She had made friends with them, and taken their photographs, and their grown-up sisters had told her lots of things about Volendam.

She had found out that as soon as the fisherfolk's sons begin to dress like boys, they are given their buckles and neck-buttons: the gold or silver knobs which are different for each fishing-village of Holland; so that, if a man is found drowned, you can tell where he comes from by his buttons.

She had learned that the trousers are baggy, because in storms the men don't get as wet as in tight ones. That the women wear eight petticoats, not only because it's "the mode," but because it's considered beautiful for a girl to look stout; and besides, it's not thought modest to show how you are shaped.

Another thing she learned was that, just as the boys must have their buckles and buttons (and ear-rings, if they can get them), each Volendam girl, if she wishes to be anybody, must have a coral necklace with a gold cross; several silver rings; a silver buckle for her purse; and a scent-bottle with a silver top and foot. No girl could hope to marry well, Lady MacNairne said, without these things; and as the ones who told her had no rings or scent-bottles in their collections, she would get her nephew to buy them. It wouldn't do for him to make the presents himself, as the girls were proud, though their fathers earned only five gulden a week; but she would give them, and then it would be all right. One of the girls was unhappy, as she was in love with a young fisherman, and they were too poor to marry, so she expected to go to Rotterdam as a nursemaid.

"It seems," said Lady MacNairne, "that Volendam girls are in demand all over Holland, as nurses; they're so good to children and animals. But this one won't have to go, for dear Ronny must supply her dot."

"Have you asked him?" I inquired.

She laughed. "No," said she. "He'll do it, though, to please me, I know."

These things were not all she had found out. She knew that Volendam had first been made famous twenty or thirty years ago by an artist named Clausen, who came by accident and went away to tell all his friends. She knew how the Hotel Spaander had been started to please the artists, and how it had grown year by year; and all the things that people told her she had written in a note-book which she wears dangling from a chatelaine. It does seem odd for a Scotswoman, and one of her rank, to be so keen about every detail of travel, that she must scribble it down in a book, in a frantic hurry. But then, many things about Lady MacNairne are odd.

The sun was blazing that morning, but a wind had come up in the night, and beaten the waves into froth. The dark sea-line stretched unevenly along the horizon, and there were no fishing-boats to be seen. All were snugly nestled in harbor, with their gay pennants just visible over the pointed roofs of the houses; and we had an exciting breakfast on the balcony, because, though it wasn't cold, the tablecloths and napkins flapped wildly in the wind, like big white rings of frightened swans.

Jonkheer Brederode had planned to go northward, skirting the coast to see two more Dead Cities of the Zuider Zee, Hoorn and Enkhuisen, and cut across the sea to Stavoren on the other side, to enter the Frisian Meers. But now he refused to take us that way. The men might go, if they liked, he said, and there really wasn't much danger; but in such rough weather he couldn't allow women to run the risk in "Lorelei."

"But it wouldn't be in 'Lorelei,' Lady MacNairne put in. 'Lorelei' has ceased to exist."

Nell grew pink and I think I grew pale. It was an awful shock to hear her speak so calmly about the loss of our dear boat, of which we have grown so fond.

"Ceased to exist!" I repeated, cold all over. "Has she gone under?"

"Only under a coat of paint," said Mr. Starr, hurriedly. "You know, Miss Van Buren consented to humor my aunt, who thought the name unlucky, by rechristening the boat 'Mascotte,' so I did it myself, this morning, the first thing, before there were many people about to get in my way."

"I'd forgotten," said Nell. "But if she's 'Mascotte' now, isn't that a sign she could take us safely through the sea? They're only miniature waves."

"You wouldn't think so if you were in their midst in a motor-boat," said the Jonkheer.

"I'm ready to try," Nell answered.

"But I'm not ready to let you," he said, with one of his nice smiles.

However, this didn't conciliate Nell. In an instant she bristled up, as she used to with him, before Amsterdam.

"It's my boat," she said.

"But I'm the boat's skipper. The skipper must act according to his judgment. Joking apart though——"

"I'm not joking. If men can go, why can't women? We're not afraid. It would be fun."

"Not for the men, if they had women to think of. You see, the boat is top-heavy, owing to the cabin superstructure, and it wouldn't be impossible for her to turn turtle in a heavy sea. Besides, rough waves might break the cabin windows, and if she began to take in water in that way, we should be done, for no bailing could help us. Do you still want to make the trip, Miss Van Buren?"

"I do," Nell insisted. "Because I don't believe those things will happen."

"Neither do I, or I shouldn't care to risk your boat. But there's a chance."

"I shouldn't dream of venturing," said Lady MacNairne, "and I'm sure Phyllis wouldn't go without her chaperon, would you, dear?"

"No," I answered; and that mercifully settled it for Nell, as she couldn't take a trip alone with the men.

"In any case, it's pleasanter to drive from here to Hoorn and Enkhuisen," went on the Jonkheer, "and the only real reason for sticking to the boat even in fine weather would have been that you came to 'do' Holland in a motor-boat, and wanted to be true to your principles. The coast is flat and low, and you'd have seen nothing except a line of land which would have looked uninteresting across the water, whereas in my car——"

"But your car isn't here," objected Nell.

"It may be, any minute now. I've been expecting it for the last hour. I wasn't trusting entirely to luck, when we came; and my chauffeur had orders to hold himself in readiness for a telegram. Last night, as soon as I saw the wind getting up, I wired him in Amsterdam, where he was waiting, to start as soon as it was light."

"You're a wonderful fellow," said Mr. van Buren, and I complimented him too; but Nell didn't speak.

A few minutes later we heard the whirr of a motor, and the buzz of excited voices. We had just finished breakfast, so we rushed from the balcony at the back of the house, through the big room of the pictures, to the front door; and there was Jonkheer Brederode's car (on the dyke, which is the only road), with the smart little chauffeur smiling and touching his cap to his master, amid a swarm of girls and boys.

By-and-by it was decided that only Jonkheer Brederode and Hendrik (with Toon on the barge) should test the motor-boat's seaworthy qualities, while Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr stopped with us. This was the Jonkheer's idea. He would prefer it, he said, as the fewer there were on "Lorelei"—alias "Mascotte"—the better. And Mr. van Buren ought to be with us, to tell us about places.

I think all the men would have liked the adventure, but they couldn't say that they didn't want to be of our party, and Lady MacNairne actually begged her nephew to come in the motor. She didn't confess that she was afraid for him. The reason she gave was that she couldn't take care of Tibe in the car without his help. I was sure she was anxious. Though I couldn't help being glad for his family's sake that Mr. van Buren was safe (as safe as any one can be in a motor-car) it did seem sad that Jonkheer Brederode was left to brave the danger without his friends.

All Lady MacNairne's thought was for her nephew, and so I felt it would be only kind to show the Jonkheer that some one cared about him. I begged him to let Hendrik manage the boat alone, for I said we should all be so worried, that it would spoil our drive. I supposed Nell would join with me, as Lady MacNairne did, if only enough for civility, but she wouldn't say a word. However, though she pretended to be more interested in examining the car than listening to our conversation, she was pale, with the air of having a headache.

Jonkheer Brederode was pleased, I think, to feel that some one took an interest in him; but he made light of the danger, and saw us off so merrily that I forgot to worry.

Mr. van Buren didn't want to drive; Mr. Starr doesn't know how; and as Nell said she would like to sit in front with the chauffeur, Lady MacNairne and I had the two men in the tonneau with us.

We were gay; but Nell didn't turn round once to join in our talk. She sat there beside the chauffeur, as glum as if she had lost her last friend. Perhaps she was alarmed for her boat, as she doesn't care about the Jonkheer.

Now we began to see what a Dutch dyke really is, and I could imagine men riding furiously along the high, narrow road, carrying the news to village after village that the water was rising.

There was just room on top for anything we might meet to pass; but the chauffeur drove slowly, and Mr. van Buren said there was no danger, so I wasn't afraid. There was a sense of protection in sitting next to him, he is so big and dependable. I felt he would not let anything hurt me; and once in a while he looked at me with a very nice look. I suppose he has even nicer ones for Freule Menela, though, when they are alone together. It is a pity her manner is so much against her.

Although I wasn't terrified, it was an exciting drive, running along on the high dyke (I could hardly believe it when Mr. van Buren said there were bigger ones in Zeeland), with the Zuider Zee on one side and the wide green reaches of Jonkheer Brederode's Hollow Land on the other.

I shivered to think what would happen if the hungry sea, forever gnawing at the granite pile, were to break it down and pour over the low-lying land. Many times in the past such awful things happened; what if to-day were the day for it to happen again?

I asked Mr. van Buren if he didn't wake up sometimes in the night with an attack of the horrors; but he seemed anxious to soothe me, as if he didn't want his country spoiled for me by fears.

"The corps of engineers who look after the coast defenses is the best in the world," he said.

Edam was our first town; and it was odd to see it, after nibbling its cheeses more or less all one's life, and never thinking of the place they came from. The funniest thing was that it smelled of cheese—a delicious smell that seemed a part of the town's tranquillity, just as the perfume seems part of a flower. In most of the pretty old houses with their glittering ornamental tiles, there was some sign of cheese-making; and all the people of Edam must have been busy making it, as we saw only two or three.

We stopped in a large public square, with a pattern in the colored pavement, like carpet, and the place was so quiet that the sound of the silence droned in our ears.

"And this," said Mr. van Buren, "was once one of the proudest cities of the Zuider Zee!"

"My goodness!" exclaimed Lady MacNairne, "is this little old thing another of the Dead Cities? Well, I'm sure it couldn't have been half as nice when it was alive." And down something went in her note-book.

We drove by a park, a noble church, and the loveliest cemetery I ever saw, not at all sad. I could not think of the dead there, but only of children playing and lovers strolling under the trees.

As soon as we were outside Edam we began to pass windmills quite different from any we had seen before. They were just like stout Dutch ladies, smartly dressed in green, with coats and bonnets of gray thatch and greenish veils over their faces, half hiding the big eyes which gazed alway toward the dyke that imprisons the Zuider Zee.

We had been off the dyke and skimming along an ordinary Dutch road for a while; but presently we swerved toward the right and were again on a dyke sloping toward the sea. Sailing along its level top we could see far off the embowered roofs and spires of a town which Mr. van Buren said was the once powerful city of Hoorn.

"Isn't there a Cape somewhere named after it?" asked Lady MacNairne gaily; and Mr. van Buren (answering that William Schouten, the sailor who discovered the Cape, named it after his native town) looked surprised at her ignorance.

She doesn't seem to know much about history, but she will know a great deal about Holland before we finish this trip if she goes on as she is going now.

In ten minutes we were in the suburbs; in five more we were in the Dead City itself; but it had the air of having been resurrected and being delighted to find itself alive again. We passed row upon row of wonderful carts, shaped like the cars of classical goddesses, though no self-respecting goddess would have her car painted green outside and blue or scarlet within.

"By Jove, now I know why Brederode was so keen on our getting off early and not waiting at Volendam till to-morrow for the wind to die!" exclaimed Mr. van Buren. "What a fellow he is to think of everything! This is the one and only time to find Hoorn at its best—market-day. And now you will see some nice things."

He had the chauffeur slow down the car in a fascinating street, with quaint houses leaning back or sidewise, and bearing themselves as they pleased.

"Which way for the cheese market?" Mr. van Buren asked an old man with a wreath of white fur under his chin.

He asked in Dutch, but so many Dutch words sound like caricatures of English ones that I begin to understand now. Besides, I have bought a grammar and study it in the evenings. This pleased Mr. van Buren when I told him, and he says I have made splendid progress. I've got as far as "I love, you love, he loves," and so on. I think Dutch an extremely interesting language.

The old man told us which way to go, and turning up a street we should never have thought of, we came out in a huge market-place presided over by a statue of Coen, a man who founded the Dutch dominion in the West Indies, or something which Mr. van Buren thought important.

We have often wondered where the people of the towns hide themselves; but there was no such puzzle in Hoorn. The market-place looked as if half the population of North Holland might be there. The whole of the square was covered with cheeses, large shiny cheeses, yellow as monstrous oranges. They glittered so radiantly in the sunlight that you felt they might at any instant burst out into a flame. Between the great glowing mounds little paths had been left, and along these paths walked lines of solemn men inspecting the burning globes and bargaining with their possessors; while outside the huge, cheese-paved space there was a moving crowd, gay and shifting as the figures made by bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.



We expected to create a sensation with the motor, but the cheeses were more interesting, and nobody had time for more than a glance at us. Suddenly, as we sat gazing at the scene, affairs in the market-place came to some kind of crisis. A stream of men appeared, dressed in spotless white from head to foot, and wearing varnished, hard straw hats of different colors. Soon, we saw it was the hats which determined everything. The blue-hatted men walked together; the red hats formed another party; the yellow hats a third; and so on. Each corps carried large yet shallow trays suspended from their shoulders—two men to a tray—and falling upon the piles of cheeses they gathered them up with incredible quickness. Then, when the trays were loaded with a pyramid of cheeses, off rushed the men to a wonderful Weigh House which Mr. van Buren says is famous throughout all North Holland. Inside were many men, busy as bees, weighing cheeses with enormous scales. Down dropped the trays; the weight was taken, and away darted the men bearing the yellow treasures to some neighboring warehouse.

We watched the weighing for a long time, until we were so hungry that we could feel no enthusiasm for anything except lunch. But as we drove through crowded streets to a hotel, it was interesting to pass warehouses where cheeses were being stored. The porters with the bright hats (worn to denote their ancient guilds) were standing on the pavement tossing up cheeses, like conjurors keeping a lot of oranges in the air. Men above, standing in open lofts, caught the golden balls as they flew up, and stored them among crowds of others that seemed to illuminate the dim background like half-extinguished lanterns glowing in the dark.

We lunched at an old-fashioned hotel with enormous rooms; and then, as we had time, we wound through the chief streets of the Dead City, stopping now and then to study bas-reliefs on ancient houses, telling of stirring events when the name of Hoorn sounded loud in the world.

There was one stone picture of many old ships in commotion among impossible waves, and the description was all in one word—"Bossuzeeslag." It seemed very impressive to sit staring up at it while Mr. van Buren told how "we" whipped the Spanish ship "Inquisition" after thirty hours' fighting on the sand-bank, and all the people of Hoorn assembled to look on.

After seeing the house where Graaf Bossu was kept prisoner our interest in the Hoorn of long ago was kindled to a blaze. Mr. van Buren proposed taking us to the Museum, so we all went, except poor Mr. Starr, who sat in front of the handsome building in the motor-car, on "dog duty," as he calls it.

I liked the reproduction of an old Dutch inn, and the plans of the Dead Cities as they used to be; but the paintings of determined-looking burgomasters in black with ruffles and conical hats, were pathetic. The men in their short frilled trousers and high boots, thought themselves so important, poor dears, with their piteous forefingers proudly pointing to maps and specifications, that it was sad to see them still doing it when all their plans had come to nothing long ago. We admired Hoorn as it is, but it would break their hearts if they could see it, given up to cheese, and only of importance in the cheese world.

We were not in the Museum long, but Mr. Starr had suffered tortures meanwhile, and looked ten years older when we came out. Tibe had been asleep on the floor of the tonneau while we were in the market-place before lunch, so nobody had seen him. But, deserted by his mistress, he sat up in the car to look for her, and the passers-by caught sight of him. Word went round that there was a strange monster, a cross between a monkey and a goblin, sitting in an automobile, and all the people of Hoorn poured into the street to see the show, just as they had poured to the harbor more than three hundred years ago when the "zeeslag" was going on.

We came out to find the car almost lost to sight in the crush; but Mr. van Buren, who is like a great, handsome Viking, pushed the people aside, and said things to them in Dutch which made some laugh and others grumble.

To escape, we drove out of the town into toy-like suburbs, with little streets, and tiny houses on dykes, each one with its drawbridge across the stream running on either side a dyke-road. And now we seemed to be in the heart of toyland. It was like a place built by Santa Claus, to come to at Christmas time, and choose presents to fill his pack.

Aalsmeer and Broek-in-Waterland, which we had thought toy-like, were grown-up villages for grown-up people compared to this toy-world.

On we went, penetrating further into the doll-country, instead of running out of it. The brown, yellow, green, and red carts, ornamented with festoons of flowers in carved wood, which were returning from market, were the only grown-up things we saw—except the trees, and they seemed abnormally tall by way of contrast.

Mile after mile, the road to Enkhuisen led on between two lines of dolls' houses and gardens. Some must have been meant for very large dolls, but that made no difference in the toy effect, as the great farmhouses, apportioned off half for toy animals, half for farmer-dolls, were just as fantastic in design and decoration as the tiny ones.

Backgrounds of meadows, canals, and windmills, I suppose there must have been, as every picture has to have its background; but backgrounds are seldom obtrusive in Holland, as Mr. Starr says; and here the two lines of toy dwellings were so astonishing that we noted nothing else.

For the whole ten miles of the drive we were playing dolls. The long, straight string of houses was knotted now and then into the semblance of a village, but never was the string broken between Hoorn and Enkhuisen, and though we saw so many, each new doll-house made us laugh as if it were the first.

I tried not to laugh at the beginning, lest it might hurt Mr. van Buren's feelings; but he didn't mind, and pointed out the funniest front doors, crusted with colored flowers, like the icing on a child's birthday cake sprinkled with "hundreds of thousands." After that, I laughed as much as I liked at everything, though I was sure the people who had built the houses took them quite seriously, and admired them beyond words. You felt that each man had put his whole soul into the scheme of his house, trying to outdo his neighbors in color or originality.

There would be a house with a red-brick front for the lower story, and the upper one, including gables, done in wood painted pea-green. Then the sides of the house would be in green and white stripes, the window-frames sky-blue, the tiny sparkling panes twinkling out like diamonds set in turquoises. But these would not be the only colors to dazzle your eyes as you flashed through the tall Gothic archway of trees darkening the road. There would be a three-foot deep band of ultramarine distemper running all round a house, the trunks of the trees and the fence would be brilliantly blue, and despite a dash of scarlet here and there, as you approached you had the impression of coming to a lake of azure water.

Further on would be another house, yellow and scarlet and white, having a door like a mosaic with raised patterns of flowers in pink, blue, and purple on a background of gold or black; and the high, pointed roof, half thatched, half covered with glittering black tiles.

These roofs made the houses look as if they had bald, shiny foreheads, with thick hair on top, and gave the windows a curiously wise expression.

But if the homesteads (with their additions for families of horses and cows) were extraordinary, they were commonplace compared with the chicken or pigeon-houses, shaped like chateaux, or Chinese pagodas, wreathed with flowers.

When at last we drove under a gateway across the road, and the color was suddenly extinguished as if a show of fireworks were over, we all felt as though we had come back to the everyday world after an excursion into elfland.

It was the entrance to Enkhuisen, the last of the Dead Cities which we were to visit—a strange, sad old town, with a charming park, churches three times too big for it, and beautiful seventeenth-century houses, small but perfect as cameos. We drove to the harbor, not only to see the wonderful humpbacked Dromedary Tower, but to find out whether there were any news of our boat, before going to the hotel.

A stiff wind was blowing; the sea was gray, and waves tossed angrily against the breakwater.

Nothing had been heard of "Lorelei-Mascotte," and though we left the car and walked to the outer harbor, straining our eyes in the direction whence she should come, no craft resembling her was in sight.

The beauty of the day had died; sky and water were dull as lead, and Nell's face, as she stood gazing out to sea, looked pallid in the bleak light.

Suddenly we felt depressed, though Mr. van Buren said it was hardly time to expect news. As we lingered, the most exquisite music began to fall over our heads, apparently from the sky, like a shower of jewels.

"The chimes of the Dromedary," said Mr. van Buren, looking up at the strong, dark tower looming above us. Our eyes followed his, and the music sprayed over us in a lovely fountain. Had the bells been all of silver, rung by fairies, the notes could not have been sweeter. In itself the air was not sad, yet it pierced to the heart; and as the chimes played I found that I was a great deal more anxious about Jonkheer Brederode than I had thought. The tears came to my eyes, and when Lady MacNairne asked what was the matter, I said impulsively that I couldn't help being frightened for our friend, doing his self-imposed duty so bravely by Nell's boat.

Going back to the hotel, we were all miserable. Even Mr. van Buren seemed wretched, though I can't think why, as he said he was not anxious about the Jonkheer. And Lady MacNairne forgot to put it down in her note-book when some one told her that Enkhuisen was the birthplace of Paul Potter.



XXIII

I shall never forget that night at Enkhuisen, or the hotel.

Mr. Starr said it was no wonder Cities of the Zuider Zee died, if they were brought up on hotels like that.

Ours, apparently, had no one to attend to it, except one frightened rabbit of a boy, who appeared to be manager, hall porter, waiter, boots, and chambermaid in one; but when we had scrambled up a ladder-like stairway—it was almost as difficult as climbing a greased pole—we found decent rooms, and after that, things we wanted came by some mysterious means, we knew not how.

It was an adventure sliding down to dinner. Tibe fell from top to bottom, into a kind of black well, and upset Lady MacNairne completely. She said she hated Enkhuisen, and she thought it a dispensation of Providence that the sand had come and silted it up.

We had quite good things for dinner, but we ate in a dining-room with no fresh air, because the commercial travelers who sat at the same table, with napkins tucked under their chins, refused to have the windows open. Mr. van Buren wanted to defy them, but his chin looked so square, and the commercial travelers' eyes got so prominent, that I begged to have the windows left as they were.

There are churches to see in Enkhuisen, and a beautiful choir screen, but we hadn't the heart to visit them. We said perhaps we would go to-morrow, and added in our minds, "if the boat is safely in."

The Rabbit hardly knew what we meant when we asked for a private sitting-room, and evidently thought it far from a proper request.

To add to our melancholy, a thunder-storm came up after dinner, and lightning looped like coils of silver ribbon across the sky and back again, while thunder deadened the chimes of the Dromedary. Still there was no news, and at last Mr. van Buren went out in torrents of rain to the harbor.

We could not bear to sit in the dining-room where the commercial travelers—in carpet slippers—were smoking and discussing Dutch politics, so we clambered up the greased pole to Lady MacNairne's room, and talked about Philip the Second, and tortures, while Tibe growled at the thunder, and looked for it under furniture and in corners.

Nell was in such a black mood that she would have liked Philip to be tortured through all eternity, because of the horrible suffering he inflicted on the people of Holland; but I said the worst punishment would be for his soul to have been purified at death, that he might suddenly realize the fiendishness of his own crimes, see himself as he really was, and go on repenting throughout endless years.

It was not an enlivening conversation, and in the midst Mr. van Buren came to say that there were no tidings of Jonkheer Brederode and the boat.

Then Nell jumped up, very white, with shining eyes. "Can't we do something?" she asked.

Her cousin shook his head. "What is there we can do? Nothing! We must wait and hope that all is well."

"Are you anxious now?" asked Lady MacNairne.

"A little," he admitted.

"I don't know how to bear it," exclaimed Nell, with a choke in her voice.

I longed to comfort her; but her wretchedness seemed only to harden her cousin's heart.

He looked at her angrily. "It is late for you to worry," he reproached her. "If you had shown concern for Rudolph's safety this morning it would have been gracious; but——"

"Don't!" she said.

Just the one word, and not crossly, but in such a voice of appeal that he didn't finish his sentence.

We sat about awkwardly, and tried to speak of other things, but the talk would drift to our fears for the boat. Nell did not join in. She sat by the window, looking out and listening to the rain and wind, which made a sound like the purring of a great cat.

Ten o'clock came, and Lady MacNairne proposed that, as we could do nothing, we women should go to bed.

Then Nell spoke. "No," she said. "You and Phil can do as you like, and Cousin Robert and Mr. Starr; but I shall sit up."

Of course I told her I would sit up, too; and as Mr. van Buren said the commercial travelers had left the dining-room, he and Mr. Starr and Nell and I bade Lady MacNairne good-night, and went down.

The unfortunate Rabbit was in the act of putting out the light, but he was obliged to leave it for us, a necessity which distressed him.

By-and-by it was eleven, and the hotel was as silent as a hotel in a Dead City ought to be. We talked spasmodically. Sometimes we were still for many minutes, listening for sounds outside; and we could hear the scampering of mice behind the walls.

"I can't stand this," said Nell. "I'm going to the harbor."

"I will take you," replied Mr. van Buren.

"No, thank you," said Nell. "I'd rather you stopped with Phil. She has a cold, and mustn't get wet."

"May I go?" asked Mr. Starr.

"Yes," she said.

So they stole away through the sleeping house, and presently we heard the front door close. Mr. van Buren and I were alone together.

He was good about cheering me up, saying he had too much faith in his friend's courage and skill as a yachtsman to be very anxious, though the delay was odd.

Then, suddenly he broke out with a strange question.

"Would it hurt you if anything should happen to Rudolph Brederode?"

I was so surprised that I could hardly answer at first. Then I said that of course it would hurt me, for I liked and admired the Jonkheer, and considered him my friend.

"I have no right to ask," he went on, "but I do beg you to say if it is only as a friend you like Rudolph."

That startled me, for I was afraid things I had done might have been misunderstood, owing to the difference of ways in Holland.

"Why," I stammered, "are you going to warn me not to care for him, because he doesn't care for me? How dreadful!"

Nell's cousin Robert looked so pale, I was afraid he must be ill. He put up his hand and pushed his hair back from his forehead, and then began pacing about the room.

"Rudolph must care—he shall care, if you wish it," he said.

"Oh," I exclaimed, "I didn't mean it was dreadful if he didn't care; but if you thought I did."

He stopped walking and took one big step that brought him to me.

"You do not?"

"Of course not," said I; "not in that way."

Mr. van Buren caught both my hands, and pressed them so tightly, that I couldn't help giving a tiny squeak.

"Ah, I have hurt you!" he cried, and a strange expression came into his eyes. At least, it was strange that it should be for me, instead of Freule Menela, for it was almost—but no, I must have been mistaken, of course, in thinking it was like that. Anyway, it was a thrilling expression, and made my heart beat as fast as if I were frightened, though I think that wasn't exactly the feeling. I couldn't take my eyes away from his for a minute. We looked straight at each other; then, as if he couldn't resist, he kissed my hands one after the other—not with polite little Dutch kisses, but eager and desperate. As he did it, he gave a kind of groan, and before I could speak he muttered, "Forgive me!" as he rushed out of the room.