"Why?" I asked, pretending unconsciousness.

"Don't you think there is a likeness?"

"I'm bad at seeing likenesses," said I.

"Why, Nell, I don't think you are," Phil defended me against myself. "You're always seeing the strangest resemblances between clouds and animals, and plants and people, and there's no end to what you find on wall papers. This very day you thought Mr. Starr like Robert Louis Stevenson, though I——"

"That's when my imagination's running loose," I explained. "Cousin Robert is talking about facts."

"Oh!" said Phil.

"It's rather an ugly portrait," I went on; "I don't suppose William of Orange was like it one bit."

"But we have two reasons for calling Brederode the Taciturn," said Robert. "He has a way to keep still about things which other people discuss. Sometimes it makes men angry, but especially the ladies. Brederode does not care what others think; he descends from the great Brederode, but he is different."

"The Water Beggar was brave," I remarked.

"Rudolph is brave," retorted Cousin Robert, firing up. "You will think so to-morrow."

"What is he going to do?" I asked. "Something to startle Holland?"

"Holland has seen him do it before, but you have not. You will see him ride better than any one else in the jumping contests at the Concours Hippique at Scheveningen. It will be a fine show, but Brederode and his horses will be the best. My mother has a box. She will take you."

"But I thought you were going to take us to The Hague and the Huis ten Bosch?"

"That will be in the early morning. Perhaps my sisters will go; and after we have finished the pictures at The Hague, we will meet my mother and my fiancee, Freule Menela van der Windt, at the race grounds about two, and the show will not be over till seven, so dinner will be late."

"You Dutch are a strong race," I murmured.

"Brederode says he always comes here when he's anywhere in the neighborhood, for a look at the Prinzenhof on the tenth of July," Robert went on. "Odd, is it not?"

"No more odd than that we should have been here," said I. But I said this in a low voice; and it's only a man who is in love with a girl who hears her when she mutters.

"He asked how the automobile was going, and I mentioned one or two things that bothered me, so he has gone out to talk to the chauffeur," Cousin Robert continued, unable to turn his thoughts from his Admirable Crichton. "Don't you think you've seen enough? It is late; and when I told Brederode I was showing Delft to my American cousin and an English friend, he said I must take you to the New Church, the tomb of William, and of Hugo Grotius. He wanted you to go to the Old Church too, and see the place where van Tromp lies, but we shall not have time. Besides, it would not please Miss Rivers."

"Why not?" asked Phyllis, large-eyed.

"You are English, and the English do not like to remember that Holland, through van Tromp, swept them off the seas—"

"Oh, I remember, he stuck up a broom on the mast," cut in Phil. "But it was long ago."

"How is it that the tombs of William and Grotius can be in a new church?" I reflected aloud.

"It is newer than the other, for it was founded in thirteen hundred and something," said Cousin Robert; "I suppose you ought to see it, even if dinner should be late. For, as Brederode says, 'Delft is the heart of Holland, and the New Church is the core of that heart.' It is for us what your Westminster Abbey is to you, Miss Rivers."

We went out from the old convent palace with its arched windows and narrow doors into the gold and green light of the Delft afternoon. In the street outside the courtyard stood the automobile, and the chauffeur was polishing something on it (people in Holland seem always to be polishing something, if they are obliged to stand still for a moment), but Mr. Rudolph Brederode, alias William the Silent, had vanished, and I was glad.

We got into the motor-car again, passing with every few yards some beautiful old building. But one thing in Delft disappointed me; I saw no storks, and I expected the air to be dark with storks.

"I don't think there are any now," said Robert, apologetically, "though Brederode would know."

"Isn't it true that the stork's the patron saint of Delft?" I asked. "Wasn't it here you had the fire which nearly ruined the city, hundreds of years ago, and the parent storks wouldn't leave their babies, but died covering them up with their wings? And didn't Holland take the stork, after that, for a kind of—of motto for the whole country because it was so brave and faithful?"

"Yes," Robert admitted, "Delft is not tired of storks, but storks are tired of Delft. You can offer them nice nests on long poles, and all kinds of inducements, to live in a certain place, but unless they choose, you cannot make them do anything."

"Ah, now I know why the Dutch have canonized storks!" I exclaimed.

And just then we arrived at the New Church, which looked inconceivably old, and inside was like a vast prison. But the tomb of black and white marble was fine, almost too fine, too much encrusted with ornament to perpetuate the memory of William the Silent. Still, I felt a thrill as I stood looking at the white, recumbent figure of the man who made Holland, and altered the face of Europe, resting so quietly after the storms of life, with his dog at his feet—the loyal little beast who saved him at Malines, and starved to death in the end, rather than live on in a dull world empty of its master.

I lingered for many minutes, remembering the eyes of the portrait, so warm with life and power, and Phil had to come and lead me away to the tomb of Hugo Grotius, the "miracle of Europe." Even Robert grew warm on the subject of Grotius, and put him ahead of Pitt, as the youthful prodigy of the world. What had he left unaccomplished when he was eighteen? And what story had ever been written by Dumas, or any other, to compare with his in melodramatic interest? I didn't know enough details of the brilliant being's history to argue (although I have always the most intense yearning to argue with Cousin Robert), but I made a note to read them up, in case I should ever be called upon to write a historical novel at short notice.

Robert discouraged Phil from buying the ware of Delft on its native heath, and we spun along twice as fast in leaving the town as we had in coming, either because a Dutchman's dinner-hour is sacred, or because this particular Dutchman was anxious to exchange our society for that of his fiancee. We flew over the smooth klinker road at such a rate that, had it been England, a policeman would have sprung from every bush. Nobody seemed to mind here, however; and the few horses we met had the air of turning up their noses at us, despite the physical difficulty in evoking that expression on an equine profile.

The country grew prettier. It was the sort of landscape old-fashioned artists used to produce out of their abundant imagination, scorning to be tied down by models, dashing in anything charming or outre which they happened to think of at the moment, and jumbling together an extravagant whole too good to be true. But there were only a few miles of it left after Delft: and we hadn't reveled in impossibly delicious farm-yards and supernaturally bowery gardens half long enough, when we ran into the outskirts of The Hague—"S. Gravenhage," as I love to call it to myself.

Until this moment, I'd been mentally patronizing Holland, admiring it, and wondering at it, of course, but half-consciously saying that quaintness, snugness, and historical interest were all we could expect of the Low Country. Elegance and beauty of form we mustn't look for: but I found myself surrounded by it in The Hague. There were streets of tall, brown palaces, far finer than the royal dwelling which Robert pointed out; the shops made me long to spring from the car and spend every penny set apart for the tour; the Binnenhof—that sinister theater of Dutch history—with its strangely grouped towers and palaces, and its huge squares, made me feel an insignificant insect with no right to opinions of any kind; and as I gazed up at the dark, medieval buildings, vague visions of Cornelis and John de Witt in their torture, of van Oldenbarneveld, and fair Adelaide de Poelgust stabbed and bleeding, flitted fearfully through my brain. I wanted to get out and look for the stone where Adelaide had fallen to die (how well I remembered that story, told in twilight and firelight by my father!), and only the set of Robert's shoulders deterred me. What was a romantic fragment of history, compared to the certainty that the roast would be overdone?

But when we swept into the green-gold dusk of the forest, I forgot such trivialities as buildings made by man.

Suddenly we were in a different world, an old, old world, with magic that lurked in each dusky vista, breathed from the perfume of leaf and fern, and whispered in the music of the trees, as if we had strayed upon the road that leads to fairyland.

"Fancy seeing fairyland from the motor-car!" I said to myself. "I never thought to go in such a fashion, though I've been sure that one day or another I would find the way there through such a forest as this."

I felt that, if I walked here alone, I might see something more mysterious than alder-trees, than giant beeches, and ancient oaks; than glints of flower-strewn waters shining out of shadow in green darkness deep and cool; than rustic bridges twined with creepers, or kiosks glimmering at the end of long, straight alleys. I should have seen processions of dim figures; chanting Druids and their victims; wild, fierce warriors, and blue-eyed women, their white arms and the gold of their long hair shining through the mist of centuries.

But then, I was in the motor-car: and though Robert, in a different and more sketchy costume, would have been a gallant Batavian warrior, there would be a certain indecorousness in permitting my fancy to make the necessary changes. I had to content myself, therefore, with things as they were; with the teuf-teuf of the automobile instead of the wild wailing of white-robed Druids, and with the coming and going of modern carriages under the shadowy branches, instead of strange chariots of bygone kings.

After all, we did not find fairy-land but merely villa-land, when we flashed out from the mysterious heart of the forest; but the villas were charming, scattered in the woods, ringed with flowery lawns, and not one without a huge veranda like a garden-room, fitted up with so many cushioned sofas, easy-chairs, and little tables, that it was clear the family life was lived there.

"I do hope my Dutch cousin's house at Scheveningen is as pretty as these," I said to myself. "It would be delicious to visit in a garden-room"; but presently we slipped out of the shade into sunlight, and were in a town of brick streets, huge hotels, with flags all a-flutter in a spanking, salt-smelling breeze, gay little shops and houses such as grow up by the sea. It was Scheveningen.

I blinked in the blaze of sunlight which tore open the green veil of dusk, and the air, though tingling with ozone, felt hot after the depths of the forest.

Not a flower, not a garden was to be seen, yet Scheveningen was a flower-garden of color in itself. Where the color came from you could scarcely say, yet it struck at your eyes from all directions. Flags flamed, roofs were red as beds of geraniums; or else they were green, or else they were vivid yellow. The hotels were of quaint design, with a suggestion of the Oriental; the shops had covered galleries, and the people moving in the big, circular place into which we drove—the place of the Kurhaus and of the circus—were drifting particles of the bright mosaic; tall, dark young officers (not at all typically Dutch according to preconceived ideas) in green and crimson or bright blue uniforms; pretty girls in white with rose-trimmed or scarlet hats; nursemaids in the costume of some remote province, the sunlight setting their gold head-ornaments on fire; tiny children in blue sailor-suits, or with a little red fez on a yellow head; old, white-haired gentlemen holding on unsuitable top-hats as they walked against the wind; white-aproned waiters flitting about restaurant verandas, carrying pink ices, or baskets of fruit, like jewels.

It was a gay scene, but Robert said it was nothing to the "high season," which began on the first of August, and brought throngs of fashionable people from all over Europe. As for the top-hats at which I laughed, he defended them stoutly, saying they were as much de rigueur at The Hague as in London, and he could see nothing comic in wearing them at the seaside.

Still we had had no glimpse of the sea; but Robert turned the car, and driving between two gigantic hotels, ran down to a beach with sands of gleaming gold, and a background of wind-blown dunes billowing away as far as the eye could reach. The very wildness of this background gave a bizarre sort of charm to the fantastic buildings which made up the fashionable center of Scheveningen.

In the center, the Kurhaus dominated all; hotel, restaurant, concert-room, theater, in one. Terrace below terrace it descended and sent out into the green water of the North Sea a great pier blossoming with flags. But the most individual feature was the large and enterprising family of "wind stoels"—dear, cozy basket-houses for one, like green and yellow bee-hives cut in half, or giant sunbonnets crowding the beach behind the bathing-machines. There one could nestle, self-contained as a hermit-crab in a shell, defying east wind or baking sun, happy with a book, or the person one liked best in a twin wind-stoel opposite.

Reposeful gaiety seemed at this first glance to be the note struck by Scheveningen, and the air was buoyant as I had never known air to be before.

"If you visit us in August," said Robert, "you will hear the best operas, see the best automobile races, the most exciting motor-boat races——"

"But we shall be on our own motor-boat in August," said I.

"I do not think so. You will perhaps let your boat. We will talk to my mother," Robert answered, as one soothes a fractious child. Then, before I had breath to answer, he swept us away from the beach, and drew up before an aggressively comfortable villa on a terrace opening to the sea.



VI

There was a garden-room with flower-painted walls, and Japanese furniture and silk things; and in the garden-room stood Cousin Robert's mother. The great glass doors were wide open, and she moved slowly to the threshold to meet us.

Yes, she is far too large to come and call upon a stranger; far, far too large for the motor-boat.

I saw in a flash why Robert put the family dinner-hour before the most important historical events which helped to make Holland. If his jaw is square enough, his gray eyes piercing enough to make his mother feel it convenient to entertain unknown guests, whatever her plans and inclinations, there's no doubt that her personality is more than commanding enough to exact respect for domestic arrangements.

It would need such a giant as Robert not to be overawed by her, outside domestic matters; and as for myself, though her pretty, smooth gray hair parts in the middle, and her cheeks grew as pink as a baby's when she smiled and told me in nice English to call her "Cousin Cornelia," I knew that if she said black were white I would instantly agree with her.

There are glass doors between the garden-room and a drawing-room behind. They were closed, because the Dutch (I am already learning) like to draw a firm dividing line between being in the house and in the open air; and I could see through the glass a half-length, life-size portrait of a humorous little brown gentleman, who was, no doubt, Cousin Cornelia's late husband, and Robert's father. Taking this for granted, it's evident that Robert gets his inches and his blond splendor of looks from his mother. There was so much of Cousin Cornelia in her black and white spotted muslin, that at first I was conscious of her presence alone. It was only her rich voice (like Devonshire cream, all in soft lumps when the English words were difficult) introducing "Freule Menela van der Windt, and your two cousins, Lisbeth and Lilli," which made me aware that others were present.

I turned to the fiancee first, and found her a dark, thin, near-sighted girl, with eye-glasses that pinched her nose, and perhaps her temper as well, for there isn't a line of her face which won't be cross-grained when she is old. She looked hard through her glasses at me and at Phil, taking stock of us both, and didn't offer to shake hands; but Lisbeth and Lilli, adorable strawberry-and-cream girls, twins of fifteen or sixteen, put out dimpled fingers.

Cousin Cornelia asked how we liked Holland, but without waiting for us to answer, told off Lisbeth and Lilli to show us our room, as there was only just time to wash away the dust of motoring.

I was awestruck by Cousin Cornelia, and depressed by Menela; still I hugged the thought that we were in luck to see the inside of a Dutch home, and determined to make the most of our experience, which may not occur again.

I never supposed it possible for the interior of a house to shine as this does. Everything shines, even things that no one expects to present a polished surface. For instance, does anybody (not Dutch) call upon walls to behave as if they were mirrors? Yet as I went up the rather steep stairs of the Villa van Buren I could see each movement I made, each rise and fall of an eyelash repeated on a surface of brilliantly varnished walnut.

"What wonderful wood!" I exclaimed.

"It is not real. It is paint," said pretty Lisbeth. "Do you not have walls like this?"

"Never," I replied.

"Every one does in Holland. We admire them," explained Lilli.

"But what a lot of work to keep them so bright."

"It is only done once a day," she said apologetically. "The servant does it when she has finished the windows."

"What—all the windows in the house—every day?"

"How else would they be clean?" asked Lisbeth, surprised.

There was no answer to this, from a Dutch point of view, so I remarked meekly that it must take all the servant's time.

"It is what they like," said Lilli. "But we have another woman for the floors and beating out the rugs, and doing the brass, so it is not so much."

"Floors and rugs and brass every day, too?"

"Of course," returned both girls together, as if I had asked them about their baths or their tooth-brushes. "Of course."

Lisbeth opened the door of a front room on the second floor.

"This is the spare room," said she, and advanced cautiously through the dusk caused by the closing of the shutters. "We keep them so in the afternoon," she explained, "because of the sunshine."

"Yes, otherwise the room would be hot, I suppose?"

"We do not mind its being hot. It is because the sun would fade the carpet and the curtains." She threw open the blinds as she spoke, but carefully shut both windows again.

"Oh, mayn't we have them open?" I ventured to ask. "The air is lovely."

"If you like," my cousin replied. "Only, if you do, the sand may blow in."

"Just at the top then."

"At the top? I have not seen a window that opens at the top. We do not have them made so."

"How funny! But I suppose there must be a reason why a whole nation should go on having windows that won't open at the top."

"I do not know, except that we have always had them like that, so probably it is better to go on," said Lilli, after a few seconds' reflection, during which she looked exceedingly charming. She and Lisbeth made no attempt at having figures, but their faces are perfect, and their long tails of hair are fair and glossy as the silk of American corn.

When the twins left us to our own devices, I was for simply washing hands and faces; but Phil fiercely tore off her blouse, and made herself pink with the effort of unearthing another from our box.

"What does it matter about changing?" I asked. "There's no time, and they don't expect it. Besides, our things are as good as theirs—except Miss van der Windt's. She's very smart—to make up for her plainness."

"That's just the point," said Phil, struggling into a white, medallioned blouse that fastened as intricately as the working of a prize puzzle. "I've taken such a dislike to her, and she to us."

"How do you know?"

"I can't tell how. But I do know. And I want our frocks to be prettier than hers. Do change, like a pet. I'll hook you up, if you'll do me. Come, you might. You would bring me abroad."

"Oh, all right!"

So I changed. And by dint of supernatural speed we were ready to leave our green-and-pink doll's bedroom just as a Japanese gong moaned an apology for supplying us with dinner instead of tea.

Once in a "blue moon" Phil and I are invited by some one to dine at the Carlton or the Savoy, or at houses where the dinners are long and elaborate; but memories of those dinners pale before the reality of this at the Villa van Buren, in a handsome, shut-up dining-room.

There were hors d'oeuvres, and shell fish, and soup, and another kind of fish; and after that began a long procession of meat and birds, cooked in delicious, rich sauces. There were so many that I lost count, as Noah must when he stood at the ark door to receive the animals as they came along, two by two; but these were a little easier to keep track of, because you could remind yourself by saying: "That was the one done up in currant juice; that was the one with compote of cherries," and so on; which, of course, Noah couldn't.

Phil's capacity and mine was exhausted comparatively early in the feast, but everybody else was eating steadily on, so we dared not refuse a course, lest it should be considered rude in Holland. We did our best, straight through to a wonderful iced pudding, and managed a crumb of spiced cheese; but when raw currants appeared, we had to draw the line. The others called them "bessen," pulling the red beads off their stems with a fork, and sprinkling them with sugar, but my blood curdled at the sight of this dreadful fruit, and my mouth crinkled up inside.

Although we sat down at six, it was after eight when we rose, and as the windows were shut, the room was suffocating. Everybody looked flushed, and I dared not hope, after excluding the air for so long, that we should be allowed a breath of it later. But Cousin Cornelia, as a matter of course, led the way into the garden-room, where lamps, shaded with rose-colored silk, had now been lighted on two of the book-and magazine-strewn tables.

The strong air of the sea blew blessedly upon us, seeming cold after the heat of the dining-room, but Cousin Cornelia did not even wrap a shawl about her shoulders. We were out-of-doors now, and it was right to have air, so you took it for granted, and did not suffer. But indoors, what were windows for if you did not keep them closed? It seemed a waste of good material, and therefore a tempting of Providence to take revenge by sending you bronchitis or rheumatism.

It was exquisite in the garden-room. Sea and sky mingled in a haze of tender blue. All the air was blue, spangled with the lights of the pier; and our lamps, and the shaded lamps of other garden-rooms, glowed in the azure dusk like burning flowers, roses, and daffodils, and tulips.

We had coffee in cups small and delicate as egg-shells, and the old silver spoons were spoons for dolls or fairies.

Robert asked if we would like to go to the circus, which could not, he said, be surpassed in Europe; or to a classical concert at the Kurhaus: but we were contented in the garden-room, with the music of the sea. We talked of many things, and if Robert is deficient in a knowledge of history, the others make up for his ignorance. They know something of everything; and even the apple-blossom twins could put Phyllis and me to shame, if they were not too polite, on the subject of modern musicians and painters.

They speak French, German, and Italian, as well as English: a smattering of Spanish too; yet they said modestly, when we exclaimed at their accomplishments, that it was nothing; hardly anybody would learn Dutch, so the Dutch must learn the languages of other nations.

As for Freule Menela (I must not call her "Miss," it seems, because "Freule" is a kind of title) she is the cleverest of all, as the sweet twins tried to make us understand; and the pretty creatures are proud of her, thinking little of their own beauty. Sometimes I fancied that a shade of contempt passed over her face when Robert ventured a remark which showed him more accomplished as sportsman than scholar; but, if she noticed that he turned to Phil or me with any brightening of interest, she at once took pains to engage his attention.

They talked in low, pleasant voices, scarcely raising their tones or making a gesture; and there was always that faint suggestion of the Scotch accent, whether they spoke English or broke into Dutch. When I remarked upon it, Cousin Cornelia laughed and said it was perhaps the common Celtic ancestry; and that if the Dutch heard Gaelic talked, they could recognize a few words here and there.

It was not more than an hour after we finished our coffee, that tea was brought, with more beautiful china, and a great deal of handsome silver. What with this potent mixture of stimulants, and being in a new house, and thinking exciting thoughts of the future, I felt I shouldn't be able to sleep. Nevertheless, after we'd said good-night, and Phil and I were undressing, I was not pleased when Cousin Cornelia knocked at the door.

"She has come about the motor-boat," I thought, "to tell us we oughtn't to go. Heaven grant me strength to resist." For in her quilted Japanese silk dressing-gown she looked larger and more formidable than ever.

Not a word did she say about the motor-boat at first. It was our past which seemed to interest her, not our future. As a relation she has the right to ask me things about myself, and Phil's history is inextricably tangled up with mine.

She wanted to know where we lived in London, and how: also on what, though she didn't put it as crudely as that. I was frank, and told her about my serial stories and Phil's typing.

"I suppose you think we're mad to break up our work and go on a motor-boat tour in Holland, as if we were millionaires, when really we're poor girls," I said, before she had time to reprove us. "But we have each about a hundred and twenty pounds a year, whatever happens, so it isn't as desperate as you might think. Besides, it is going to be the time of our lives. Even my stepsister feels so now, though she was against it at first, and neither of us would give it up for anything."

"I don't think you should give it up," said Cousin Cornelia. You might have knocked me down with a feather—quite a small one: for in her note she had said we must come and let her offer us good advice before it was too late; and Robert had hinted that his mother meant to dissuade us from our wild-goose chase—in the company of Mr. Starr and Mr. Starr's aunt.

"I think you know how to take care of yourselves," she went on.

"And we'll have a chaperon," Phil assured her.

"So I have heard, from my son. I have great faith in the Scotch. Yes, as you have been a little too kind-hearted, and promised this strange young man, it is necessary that somebody should have an aunt. Otherwise, if you two had been quite alone together, it would not so much have mattered. In Holland girls have liberty, more than anywhere except in America. The bicycle is their chaperon, for all young girls and men bicycle with us. The motor-boat might have been your chaperon. Even if the aunt should not come, perhaps the nephew could be got rid of, and a way arranged, rather than give up your tour."

We were delighted, and I could have hugged Cousin Cornelia. Indeed, I did thank her warmly, and was rather surprised that Phil, who usually overflows with gratitude for the slightest kindness, was not more effusive over my relative's interest in our affairs, and her broad-minded verdict.

"She's a lamb, after all, isn't she?" I asked, when the large lady had gone, and I was ready to creep into a bed only an inch too short for me.

"She may be a lamb, but she isn't going to let us shear her, if she can help it," said Phil, looking deadly wise.

"What do you mean?"

"My dear girl, with all your cleverness, you're only a baby child about some things. Don't you see what's she's driving at?"

I shook my head, with my hair about my face.

"Or what all her questions were leading up to? Well, then, what do you think has made her change her mind about our motor-boating?"

"She saw we could take care of ourselves."

"She has found out that we're poor, and obliged to. She supposed from what your cousin Robert told her, that we were heiresses; and she would have kept us on a long visit if—oh, you silly old dear, don't you see she's afraid of us—with him? She'll be polite and nice, but she wants us to disappear."

"Good gracious!"

"Pretty Lilli told me this evening that Freule Menela van der Windt hasn't much money, but she comes of a splendid family: she's a distant relation of that Mr. Brederode, and her people are diplomats who live at The Hague, though she's an orphan and visits about. If one of us were rich—why—oh, it's too horrid to go on. Now, maybe, you understand what I mean, and can put two and two together and agree with me."

"For a saint, you sometimes develop a hideous amount of worldly wisdom, my Phil," I replied. "But when I come to think Cousin Cornelia over, I'm afraid you're right. It would be fun to flirt with Robert, and frighten her, wouldn't it?"

"We are going away—to the motor-boat—to-morrow, and we shall never see him again," said Phil. "Besides, it's wrong to flirt, even with foreigners; and now do let me say my prayers."



VII

Next morning, when I waked up, and cautiously drew my watch from under the pillow, not to disturb Phyllis, it was only six o'clock, and there was Phil gazing at me, with eyes large and bright in the green dusk that filtered through the olive curtains.

"I've been awake for ages," said she.

"What are you thinking about?"

"The motor-boat. Queer—but I can't help it."

"Neither can I. Can you go to sleep again?"

"No. Can you?"

"Not I. Let's get up, and creep out of doors. What fun to go down to the beach and take a bath!"

"Nell! In our nighties?"

"Silly! We'll hire things—and bathing-machines."

After mature deliberation Phil decided not to risk being taken for a thief by the van Buren family; but I could not abandon the idea, and fifteen minutes later I was softly unlocking the front door, to steal alone into the pearly, new-born day. Oh, the wonder of it—the wonder of each new day, if one only stopped to think; but the wonder of this above all others!

Already there were a few people about, hurrying beachward; and when I reached the level of the firm, yellow sand, there were the red-trousered men of the bathing-machines, in full activity, getting their horses into the traces, while dogs raced wildly over sand-hillocks, and children played with bright, sea-washed shells the waves had flung them.

Two or three of the bath-machines were in use, some were engaged for persons not yet arrived, and I thought myself lucky in securing one drawn by the handsomest horse of all. The others were dull, blase-looking creatures compared to him; indeed, he was far too fine for a mere bathing-machine, and had a lovely cushiony back like the animals on which beautiful ladies pirouet in circuses. I longed to try it myself, when my shoes and stockings were off.

Just as I had got into the prickly blue serge costume provided by the "management," I heard the sound of stirring military music, played not far away by a brass band, and something queer happened at the same moment. The machine began to rock as if there were an earthquake, to dart forward, to retreat, and at last to go galloping ahead at a speed to suggest that in a sudden fit of hallucination it had persuaded itself it was a motor-car.

"That horse!" I gasped, and swaying first against one wall, then against the other, scarcely able to keep my feet, I tore the door open and peeped out.

If I had not been frightened I should have laughed, for it was plain to see from the expression of that cushiony back, that the animal was merely pretending to be afraid of the music, in a kittenish wish for a little early morning fun. But he was also pretending in quite a life-like manner to run away, and the thought occurred to me that the consequences might be as awkward for the occupant of the machine as if the jest were earnest.

"Whoa, whoa," cried a voice in pursuit, and splash! went the beast into the surf. He was playing that he was a sea-horse, now, and enjoying it selfishly, without a thought of poor me in the horrid, tottery little box that would be knocked over by a big wave, maybe, in another instant, in a welter of sand and salt water, under a merry horse's hoofs.

I clung to the door with one hand, and the frame with the other, swinging back and forth on the threshold, with abnormally large iron shoes flying up and down in the wet green foreground, and the whole North Sea towering over me in the middle distance—oh, but a very near middle distance!

I wavered in mind as well as body. If I didn't jump out—now, this minute—I might be caught and pinned like a mouse in a trap, under the water. If I did jump, the horse would kick me, and the wheels of the machine would go over me, and I should be battered as well as drowned before anybody could fish me out. I did feel horribly alone in the world, and the waves looked as tall as transparent green skyscrapers.

"One, two; at three I'll jump," I was saying resolutely, between chattering teeth, when a head came toward me in the sea. It came on top of a wave, and like the dear little cut-off cherubs in old-fashioned prayer-books, it seemed to have no body, yet I recognized it, and felt half inclined to bow (salutation, O Caesar, from one about to die!) only it would have seemed ridiculous to bow to a mere passing head, when one was on the eve of being swept away by the North Sea. Phyllis might have done it. I gave a short shriek, and then it appeared that the head had full control of the wave, for it stopped and let the wave rush by, to show that it had a tall, brown, dripping body, sketchily clad in the kind of thing that men dare to call a bathing-suit.

It did not seem strange at the time that William the Silent should be shot from a wave as if by a catapult, and still less strange that without a word he should seize my horse by the head and stop him. It seemed the sort of thing that ought to happen to foreigners traveling in Holland, if in need of succor.

"Oh, thank you so much!" I heard myself saying, just as if he had had on a frock-coat and top-hat, and had stopped a hansom cab for me in Bond Street.

"Not at all," I heard him reply, in the same London-in-the-season tone. Then suddenly I thought of Stanley in the desert saying, "Dr. Livingstone, I believe?" and my bare feet, and his dripping hair, and the whole scene struck me so quaintly that I laughed out aloud; whereupon he smiled a wet, brown smile, showing white teeth.

"I'm not having hysterics," I spluttered, with my mouth full of spray. "It's only—only—" and the spray choked me with its salt.

"Of course," said William the Silent, grave again, and so like the portrait that I felt I must be a historical character, acting with him in an incident forgotten or expurgated by Motley. "I'm so glad I came. I saw you from further out, and thought something was wrong. But it's all right now."

"Yes, thank you," I said meekly. "Why, you're an Englishman, aren't you?"

"Dutch to the backbone," he answered; and then, suddenly conscious, perhaps, that the (might one call it "feature"?) he had mentioned, was too much exposed to be discussed thus lightly, he changed the subject.

"Here's your man," he said quickly, and forthwith fell to scolding in vehement Dutch the unfortunate wretch who had waded to the rescue. The horse, made sadder if not wiser by blows from his master, allowed himself to be backed for a certain distance, until it was safe for me to descend and take my postponed bath. I had but time to bow and murmur more inane thanks, to receive another bow and polite murmur in return (both murmurs being drowned by the sea) when the retrograde movement of the bathing-machine parted me and my living life-preserver. He stood in the water looking after us long enough to see that there would be no further incidents, then took a header into the waves again.

I'm not sure that my adventure did not add spice to the salt of my bath. Anyhow, it was glorious, and I ran back to the villa at last tingling with joy of life, in time to be let in by a maid who was cleaning the door-steps. It was half-past seven, and breakfast was at eight. I had to make haste with my toilet, but luckily there are few tasks which can't be accompanied by a running fire of chat (that is, if one is a woman) so I had told everything to Phyllis by the time I had begun fastening the white serge frock in which I was to go to The Hague and the Concours Hippique. Just then the Japanese gong sent forth its melancholy wail, so we hurried down, and I forgot to tell Phyllis not to mention the incident. I didn't think it the kind of incident which would be approved by the van Buren family, and on second thoughts I didn't approve of it myself.

Hardly were we comfortably seated at the table, however, when Phil told Robert what a part his friend had played in my adventure. I could not stop her, and when I was called upon for details, gave them rather than seem to be secretive.

"We must be thankful that Brederode was taking his dip early," said Robert. "I will tell him this afternoon that we are very grateful for what he did."

I blushed consciously. "Oh, must you?" I asked. "Somehow, I've an idea he'll think it stupid of me to have mentioned it. Besides, maybe it wasn't your friend. Perhaps it was some one who looked like him. The—er—dress was so different, and I had hardly seen Mr. Brederode——"

"Jonkheer Brederode," corrected Freule Menela, softly.

I broke out laughing. "Jonkheer! Oh, do forgive me, but it sounds so funny. I really never could call a person Jonkheer, and take him seriously."

"You will have to call him Jonkheer when I bring him to the box, after he has finished his part in the Concours Hippique," said Robert. "There is no one who looks like Rudolph Brederode, so it must have been he. You can see this afternoon."

"But I don't want to see," I objected, crossly, for I felt I could not solemnly and adequately thank the young man before my listening relatives, for popping out of the sea in his microscopic costume, and coming to the rescue of me in mine. I had squeaked and curled up my toes, and been altogether ridiculous; and I knew we should at best burst out laughing in each other's faces—which would astonish the van Buren family.

"Whoever he was, I thanked him three times this morning, and that's enough," I went on. "He wasn't risking his life, you know, and really and truly, I'd rather not meet him formally, if you don't mind."

"Very well," said Cousin Robert, looking offended, and turning his attention to breakfast.

It was, when I came to notice it, the oddest breakfast imaginable, yet it had a tempting air. There was a tiny glass vase of flowers at each person's place, and the middle of the table was occupied by a china hen sitting on her nest. The eggs which she protected were hard-boiled; and ranged round the nest were platters of every kind of cold smoked meat, and cold smoked fish, dreamed of in the philosophy of cooks. There was also cold ham; and there were crisp, rich little rusks, and gingerbread in Japanese tin boxes, to eat with honey in an open glass dish, and there was coffee fit for gods and goddesses. Even Phil drank it, though she was offered tea, excusing her treachery by saying that she found her tastes were changing to suit the climate of Holland—a dangerous theory, since who can tell to what wild lengths it may lead?

When we had finished, the coffee-tray was taken from its place in front of Cousin Cornelia, and another tray, bearing two large china bowls of hot water, a dish with soap, a toy mop with a carved wood handle, and two towels, was substituted for it.

"I wash the fine china and the coffee-spoons myself, after breakfast," explained Cousin Cornelia, slipping off her rings, and beginning her pretty task. "The best of servants are not as careful as their mistresses, and it is a custom in Holland."

"But you didn't wash the coffee- and tea-cups last night after dinner," I reminded her.

"No," she replied, "I never do that."

"But isn't the china as valuable, and isn't there as much danger of it's being broken?"

She looked puzzled, almost distressed. "Yes, that is true," she admitted, "but—it is not a custom. I don't know why, but it never has been."

Her housewifely pleasure was spoiled for the moment, and I wished that I hadn't spoken.

After all, Lisbeth and Lilli were not to go with us to The Hague. This was the morning for opening the curio cabinets in the drawing-room, and washing the contents, and the girls were expected to help their mother. As the glass doors are never opened, unless that some guest may carefully handle a gold snuff-box, a miniature, or a bit of old Delft, the things could scarcely need washing; but the rule is to have them out once a month, and it would be a crime to break it. This Freule Menela explained in a low voice, and with the suspicion of a smile, as if she wished the two girls from London to understand that she was able to see the humorous side of these things.

"Your cousins are old-fashioned," she went on, "though dear people; I've known them since I was a child, and am fond of them for their own sakes as well as Robert's. You must not think that everybody in our country dines at five. For instance, if you visited in my set at The Hague, you would find things more as they are in France. When Robert and I are married I shall manage the house."

We listened civilly, but liked her none the better for her disavowal of van Buren ways.

"Horrid, snobbish, disloyal little wretch," said Phil, afterwards, quite viciously. "Your cousin's a hundred times too good and too good-looking for her; but she doesn't know that. She fancies herself superior, and thinks she's condescending to ally herself with the family. I do believe she's marrying your cousin for his money, and if she could get a chance to do better according to her ideas, she'd throw him over."

"It isn't likely she'll ever have another chance of any sort," said I; "Robert won't get rid of his bargain easily."

"She's going with us this morning, and makes a favor of it," went on Phil. "She says she's tired to death of the pictures; but I'm sure ten wild horses wouldn't keep her at home."

Be that as it may, the power of twenty wild horses in motor form rushed her away in our society and that of her fiance.

In the beautiful forest, which I was happy in seeing again, we threaded intricate, dark avenues, and came at last (as if we had been a whole party of tourist princes in the tale of the "Sleeping Beauty") to the House in the Wood.

The romance of the place grew in my eyes, because a princess built it to please her husband, and because the husband was that son of William the Silent who best carried on his father's plans for Holland's greatness. I'm afraid I cared more about it for the sake of Princess Amalia and Frederic Henry of Orange, than for the sake of the Peace Conference, because the Conference was modern; and it was of the princess I thought as we passed through room after room of the charming old house, hidden in the very heart of the forest. Had she commanded the exquisite Chinese embroideries, the wonderful decorations from China and Japan, and the lovely old china? I wouldn't ask, for if she had had nothing to do with that part, I didn't wish to know.

In the octagonal Orange Salon where the twenty-six Powers met to make peace, and where the walls and cupola are a riot of paintings in praise of Frederic Henry and his relations, we strained our necks to see the pictures, and our brains to recall who the people were and what they had done; but even the portrait of Motley, which we'd just passed, and the knowledge that he wrote in this very house did not always prod our memories.

Robert would not let us stay long at the House in the Wood. He took us to see the site of the Palace of Peace, which Mr. Carnegie's money and a little of other people's will build, and then flashed us on to The Hague in time to reach the Mauritshuis as it opened.

Robert didn't pretend to know much about the pictures, though he was patriotically proud of them, as among the best to be found, if you searched the world. But the fiancee was in her element. "Tired to death" of these splendid things she might be, in her small soul, but she was determined to impress us with her artistic knowledge.

"I know exactly where all the best pictures are," she said, motioning away the official guides, "and I will take you to them."

She had a practical, energetic air, and her black eyes were sharp behind her pince-nez. I felt I could not be introduced by her to the glorious company of great men, and basely I slipped away from the party, leaving Phil to follow with outward humility and inward rebellion—a martyr to politeness.

Oh, how glad I was to be left alone with the pictures, with nobody to tell me anything about them! I flew back to buy a catalogue, and then, carefully dodging my friends, whose backs I spied from time to time, I gave myself up to happiness.

I didn't want to see the Madonnas and nymphs and goddesses, and Italian scenes, which a certain school conscientiously produced, because in their day it was the fashion. I wanted only the characteristically Dutch artists, the men who loved their dear Hollow Land, putting her beyond all, glorifying her, and painting what they knew with their hearts as well as eyes—the daily life of home; the rich brown dusk of humble rooms; the sea, the sky, the gentle, flat landscape, the pleasant domestic animals.

My acquaintance with Dutch art was made in London at the National Gallery; now I wanted to see it at home, and understand it as one can best understand it here.

I soon found the great Rembrandt—"the School of Anatomy," and stood for a long time looking at the wonderful faces—faces in whose eyes each thought lay clear to read. What a picture! A man who had done nothing else all his life long but paint just that, would have earned the right to be immortal; but to have been only twenty-six when he did it, and then to have gone on, through year after year, giving the world masterpieces, and to be repaid by that world in the end with poverty and hardship! My cheeks burned as I stood thinking of it, and somehow I felt guilty and responsible, as if I'd lived in Rembrandt's day, and been as ungrateful as the others.

I had expected to be disappointed in Paul Potter's "Bull," because people always speak of it at once, if they hear you are going to Holland; but if you could be disappointed in that young and winning beast who kindly stands there with diamonds in his great velvet eyes, and the breath coming and going under his rough, wholesome coat for you to look at and admire, when all the time you know that he could kill you if he liked, why, you would deserve to be gored by him and trodden by his companions.

How I wanted to have known Jan van Steen, and thanked him for his glorious, rollicking, extraordinary pictures (especially for "The Poultry Yard"), and have slyly stolen his bottle away from him sometimes, so that he might have painted even more, and not have come to ruin in the end! How I loved the gentle Van Ruysdaels, and how pathetic the everlasting white horse got to seem, after I had seen him repeated again and again in every sort of tender or eccentric landscape! Poor, tired white horse! I thought he must have been as weary of his journeyings as the Wandering Jew.

There are two Rubens in the Mauritshuis which intoxicated me, as if I'd been drinking new red wine; and there is one little Gerard Douw, above all other Gerard Douws, worth a three-days' journey on foot to see. In a window of the Bull's room I found it; and I stood so long staring, that at last I began to be afraid the others might have gone away. They came upon me, though, all too soon, and exclaimed, "Why, where have you been?" and "We've been looking for you everywhere." I said I was sorry, and wondered how I had been so stupid as to miss them. Then we were marshalled away by Robert for luncheon, as we'd been three hours in the Mauritshuis, and before long we must be driving to the Concours Hippique.

Only three hours in some of the best society on earth, and I shall be expected to tell about my impressions when I go back to England! I know well that I can tell nothing worth telling; and yet, even in this short time, I feel that I understand more about Holland and the Hollanders than I could have come to understand, except through their pictures—more even than Motley could have told me.

I said to myself as I went away from the galleries, that Dutch painting would stand for me henceforth as an epitome of the Dutch people. No one but the Dutch could have painted pictures like theirs—so quaint, so painstaking, and at the same time so splendid. Their love of rich brown shadow and amber light was learned in the dim little rooms of their own homes, and of inns where the brass and pewter gleamed in the mellow dusk of raftered kitchens, and piles of fruit and vegetables fell like jewels, from paniers such as Gerard Douw took three days to paint on a scale of three inches.

We had a hasty luncheon at a nice hotel with an air of Parisian gaiety about it, and sped away in the motor to the Horse Show, which was to be held in a park between The Hague and Scheveningen. It was advertised on every wall and hoarding, even on lamp-posts, and Freule Menela (gorgeous in a Paris frock and tilted hat) prophesied that, as the Queen and Prince Consort were honoring the occasion, we should see the loveliest women, handsomest men, and prettiest dresses, as well as the best horses that Holland could produce.

"When I say Holland, I mean The Hague; it is the same thing," she added, with a conceited toss of the chin; and I thought she deserved shaking for her sly dig at Robert of Rotterdam, than whom there can be no handsomer young man in the Netherlands.

Cousin Cornelia in filmy gray, and the twins radiant as fresh-plucked roses in their white frocks and Leghorn hats, had arrived, and were in one of the many long, open loggias close to the red-and-gold pavilion which was ready for the Royalties.

Over the pavilion, with its gilded crown and crest, floated the orange flag as well as the tricolor of Holland; everywhere flags were waving and red bunting glowing, and there was far more effect of color than at an English race-meeting. Every box, every seat, was full; pretty hats nodded like flowers in a huge parterre swept by a breeze; smart-looking men with women in trailing white walked about the lawns; and Robert and Menela pointed out the celebrities—ambassadors and ambassadors' wives, politicians, popular actresses, celebrated journalists, men of title or wealth who owned horses and gave their lives to sport.

All the men of the haut mond were in frock-coats and tall hats, and most of them looked English. There were few of the type which I preconceived as Dutch, yet I saw faces in the crowd which Rembrandt or Rubens might have used as models; thin, dark faces; hard, shrewd faces, with long noses and pointed chins; good-natured round faces, with wide-open gray eyes; important, conceited faces like the burgomasters in ancient portraits.

"Not a type has changed," I said to myself. "These people of to-day are the same people who suffered torture smiling, who were silent on the rack, who drove the Spaniards out of their land, and swept the English from the seas."

This was my mood when a stir among the throng heralded the coming of the Queen, and I applauded as patriotically as a Dutchwoman the young daughter of the brave house of Orange and Nassau.

She had a fine procession, and made an effective entrance through the wide gates that swung apart to let in her outriders in their green livery, and the royal coaches, with powdered coachmen and footmen in blazing red and gold. A charming young woman she looked, too, in her blowing white cloud of chiffon and lace, and ostrich-plumes. While she circled round the drive with her suite, I heard the Dutch National Hymn for the first time, and also a soft and plaintive air which is the Queen's own—a kind of "entrance music" which follows her about through life, like the music for a leading actress on the stage.

When the Queen in her white dress, the stout, bland Prince Consort in his blue uniform, and the ladies of the Court were settled under the crimson curtains of the pavilion, officers who were competing in the Horse Show—Hollanders in green and cerise, and plain blue; Belgians in blue and red; two or three Danes in delicious azure—were brought up with much ceremony to be introduced.

"There goes Rudolph Brederode," said Robert, a light of friendly admiration kindling in his eyes for a tall, slim figure in black coat and riding-breeches. "See, her Majesty is wishing him good luck. He—" But my cousin glanced at me, and remembering my base ingratitude, decided that I deserved no further information about his hero, who ought to be my hero too.

I pretended not to hear, and watched the show of beautiful horses and carriages. They went round and round the great grassy ring, each driver (and some of them were English) taking off their top-hats in front of the Royal Pavilion.

There was a good deal of this kind of entertainment, but the best part of the show was saved for the last, when all the glittering carriages had disappeared from the course. Then came the jumping competition, in which the finest riders, officers and civilians, were to prove what they and their horses could do.

The crowd had wearied of the long driving contests, but as the Dutch soldiers ran out across the grass to take their places beside the hedges, hurdles, water-jumps, and obstacles, there was a general brisking up.

Then began the real excitement of the afternoon. People greeted their favorites with applause, and Cousin Robert's hero had the largest share. He made a splendid figure on his delicately shaped roan, a creature all verve and muscle like his master, graceful as a cat, and shining in the sun with the rich effulgence of a chestnut fresh from the burr.

I couldn't help a jumping of the pulses when the bell rang, and the good-looking young men on their grand horses cantered into the ring. Rudolph Brederode was the last, and his horse came in on its hind legs, pawing and prancing with sheer joy of life and its own beauty; yet what a different beast from that other who had also pirouetted to the sound of music in the morning! I wondered if William the Silent thought—but of course he didn't.

One by one the horses started, urged on or held back by their riders. All rode well, but not one got round the course without a fault—a jump short at a ditch; a hind hoof that brushed a hedge; the ring of an iron shoe on a hurdle; or a wooden brick sent flying from the top row on a high wall; not one, until Rudolph Brederode's turn came.

At the last moment, a pat of his hand on his horse's satin shoulder quieted the splendid creature's nerves. Instantly it was calm, and coming down from fun to business, started off at the daintest of canters, which broke at exactly the right second into a noble bound. Without a visible effort the adorable beast rose for each obstacle, floating across hedges and walls as if it had been borne by the wings of Pegasus. The last, widest water-jump was taken with one long, flying leap; and then, doffing his hat low to the Royal Box, the conqueror rode away in a storm of applause.

"It's always like that. Brederode never fails in anything he undertakes," said Robert, as happy as if he, and not his friend, had been the victor. "I'm off to congratulate him now."

Two minutes later I saw the hero among the crowd, his head towering above most other heads; then I lost sight of him, and turned again to watch the course, for the riding was not nearly finished yet. But with the triumph of the great Water Beggar's descendant, the best was over. No one else did as well as he, or had as fine a horse, and I found myself looking for him and Robert. Maybe Robert would bring him to the box in spite of all. It was a pity the others should be cheated of a word with him—which even the twins seemed to hope for—just because Robert had to punish me.

But he did not come, nor did Robert until after the Royalties had gone, and Cousin Cornelia was ready to go too.



RUDOLPH BREDERODE'S POINT OF VIEW



VIII

I don't often do things that I have set my mind against doing, but when Destiny lays a hand on one's steering-gear, unexpected things happen.

My idea has always been that, when my time came to fall seriously in love, the girl would be a Dutch girl. I like and respect Dutch girls. When you want them, there they are. There's no nonsense in them—at least, as little as possible, considering that they are females. They don't fuss about their temperaments, and imagine themselves Mysteries, and Chameleons, and Anomalies, and make themselves and their lovers miserable by trying to be inscrutable. You can generally tell pretty well what they are going to do next, and if you don't want them to, you can prevent them from doing it. Also they have good nerves and good complexions, and for these reasons, and many others, make perfect wives for men with family traditions to keep up. That is why I always intended to fall seriously in love with a Dutch girl, although my mother was an Englishwoman, and her father (an English earl who thought England the only land) made an American heiress his Countess.

More than once I've come near to carrying out my intention, but the feeling I had, never seemed the right feeling, so I let the matter drop, and waited for next time.

A few days ago, I found out that there would never be a next time. I knew this when Rob van Buren spoke of the two girls who were with him at the Prinzenhof on July tenth as his "American cousin and an English friend."

I can never fall in love with a Dutch girl now, for I have done the thing I did not mean to do, and it can't be undone in this world. Once and for all, that is settled, however it may go with me where the girl is concerned. But it will go hard if I do not have her in the end, and I shall if she is to be got; for the men of my blood soon make up their minds when they want a thing, and they do not rest much until it's theirs. This peculiarity has often landed them in trouble in past times, and may land me in trouble now; but I'm ready for the risk, as they were.

I didn't know at first which was the English girl—my girl with the chestnut hair, dark hazel eyes, and rose and white complexion; or the other girl with brown hair, eyes of violet, and skin of cream. But when I encountered my girl in the sea at half-past six in the morning, unchaperoned except by a foolish runaway horse attached to a bathing-machine, I should have guessed that she was the American, even if there had been nothing in her pretty voice to suggest it.

I am sorry that it couldn't have been the other way round, for my English mother's sake, since my fate isn't to be Dutch. But it can't be helped. I have seen The One Girl, and it would be the same if she were a Red Indian.

I was going to lead up to the subject when van Buren came to speak to me at the Horse Show; but he began it, by thanking me, in the grave way he has, for coming to his cousin's rescue in the morning. I shouldn't have referred to that little business, as she might not have mentioned her adventure; but as she had told the story, it gave me a foundation to work on.

I said truly that what I had done was nothing, but hinted that I should be pleased to meet the young lady again; and thereupon expected an invitation to visit his mother's box. To my surprise, it didn't come, and Robert's face showed that there was a reason why.

"My cousin doesn't deserve that you should take an interest in her," he blurted out. "She is pretty, yes, and perhaps that is why she is so spoiled, for she is vain and capricious and flippant. I wish it were Miss Rivers who had our blood in her veins."

Queerly enough, instead of cooling me off toward the girl, Robert's criticism of her had the opposite effect. I have liked Robert since I took him under my wing during my last and his first year at Leiden. Perhaps it tickles my vanity to know that he has been boyish enough to make me into a kind of hero, little though I deserve it, and whenever I have been able to do him a good turn I have done it; but suddenly I found myself thinking him a young brute, and feeling that he deserved kicking.

"I suppose Miss Van Buren hasn't paid enough attention to your High Mightiness," said I.

"She hasn't put herself out much," said he; "but it isn't that I care about, it's her attitude toward you. Of course you couldn't help hearing what she said yesterday at the Prinzenhof about the portrait of William the Silent. Because I asked her afterwards if she didn't think it looked like you, she said not a bit; anyhow she had only been joking, and it was an ugly portrait. Then, this morning at breakfast, when I heard what happened on the beach, I told her that perhaps she would have the chance this afternoon to thank you. Instead of being pleased, she answered that she'd thanked you enough already, that you had run no risk, as what you did was nothing much, after all, and she hoped I wouldn't bring you. I tell you, Brederode, I could have boxed her ears."

I must confess that mine tingled, and for a moment I felt hurt and angry with the girl, but it was only for a moment. Then I laughed.

"Served you right for forcing me upon her," said I. "Well, it's evident she's taken a dislike to me. It must be my business to change that, for I have exactly the opposite feelings toward her. Some day I shall make her like me."

"I wonder you can think it worth while to trouble your head over my cousin, after what I've felt it right to tell you," said Robert. "I thought you ought to know, otherwise you would have considered it strange I didn't ask you to our box, as I should have been proud to do; but I was angry for your sake, and said I wouldn't bring you near her. Now, as things are, I don't see how you can meet my cousin. The van Buren blood is at its worst in her, and it has made her obstinate as a pig."

"Heavens, what a simile!" said I; yet I couldn't help laughing. "I, too, am obstinate as a pig; and being proud of my Dutch blood, I like her the better for hers, all the more because it's obstinate blood, and it wouldn't be true Dutch if it were not. I tell you, Robert, I'm going to know your cousin—not through you; I don't want that now, but in some other way, which will arrange itself sooner or later—probably sooner."

"I don't see how," Robert repeated. "I was in hopes that she and Miss Rivers, her stepsister, could have been persuaded by my mother to pay us a long visit, and give up an objectionable plan they have. But Cousin Helen—Nell, as Miss Rivers calls her—has been pig-headed even with my mother. I am sure it is not Miss Rivers's fault. She is not that kind of girl."

"Do you mind telling me the objectionable plan?" I asked.

"I shall be glad to tell," said he, "and see if you don't agree with me that it is monstrous, though, strange to say, now mother has talked with the girls, she does not seem to think it as bad as she was inclined to at first. She tells me that they are determined to persist, and she thinks they will come to no harm. My cousin has been left a motor-boat by a friend's will. You must have seen it: Captain Noble's 'Lorelei,' which used to lie near the Rowing Club. She and Miss Rivers have come to take a trip through the waterways of Holland, though my mother has learned that their financial circumstances hardly warrant such an undertaking."

"Plucky girls!" was my comment.

"Ah, but you don't know all. A young man is going with them, a strange American young man, whom they never saw till yesterday."

"By Jove! In what capacity—as chauffeur?"

"Not at all. As a sort of paying guest, so far as I can understand the arrangement."

"It sounds rather an odd one."

"I should say so; but I mustn't make you think it's worse than it is. There was a misunderstanding about the boat. The American thought he'd hired it from the caretaker, and they were sorry for his disappointment. He has an aunt, a Scotswoman of title, who is to be of the party."

"That makes all the difference, doesn't it?—not the title, but the aunt."

"It makes a difference, certainly; but the man may be an adventurer. He's an artist, it appears, named Starr——"

"What, the Starr whose Salon picture made so much talk in Paris this spring?"

"Yes; but being a good artist doesn't constitute him a good man. He might make love to the girls."

"Beast! So he might, aunt or no aunt. She'll probably aid and abet him. I don't know that I blame you for objecting to such an adventure for your cousin."

"Oh, it isn't so much for her—that is, except on principle. But I've done all I can, and my mother has done all she can, so you can imagine what my cousin's pig-headedness is like to resist us both. My mother tells me she could do nothing with her; and the girls are leaving us to-morrow. They go back to Rotterdam, where they expect to find Starr's aunt, and, they hope, a skipper for the motor-boat. Cousin Helen asked if I could recommend a suitable man; but even if I knew one, I should not make it easier for her to flout the wishes of the family."

"Naturally not," said I, with the sort of fellow-feeling for Robert which makes one wondrous kind. And I was sure that if I were Miss Van Buren's cousin, and had set myself against her doing a certain thing, she would not have done it.

"However, they are returning to Rotterdam early in the morning, and that being the case, as I was saying, I don't see how it will be possible for you to meet my cousin."

"I bet that I will meet her, and be properly introduced, too, before either of us is a week older," said I, and then was sorry I had clothed my resolve in such crude words. But it was too late to explain or apologize, for at that instant two or three men came up. The thought of what I had blurted out lay heavy on my mind afterwards, and if it had not seemed a far-fetched and even school-missish thing to do, I would have sent a line to Robert asking him to erase that clumsy and impertinent boast from his memory. If he is stupid enough or awkward enough to repeat anything of our conversation, and give Miss Van Buren the impression that I tried to make a wager concerning her, it will be all up with me, I know.

As it is, I can only hope that my words will go out at one ear as fast as they went in at the other.

Next morning I had made no definite plan of action, but thought that as Miss Van Buren was going to Rotterdam, it could do no harm for me to go to Rotterdam too, and see what would happen next. Things of some sort were bound to happen, and one way or other my chance might come before she started on her journey.

My mother is at Chateau Liliendaal, the place where she likes best to spend July and August when we don't run over to England; but she didn't expect me to join her for some days, and meanwhile I was free to do as I chose.

I was in hopes that I might see Miss Van Buren in the train, if I took the most popular one in the morning; but she and her stepsister were not on board, so I fancied Robert must be driving them back in the borrowed car, despite his objections to their proceedings.

I went straight to the Rowing Club, where I have several friends, and as I knew from Robert that the motor-boat was 'Lorelei' I easily found out where she was lying. The next thing was to go and have a look at her, to see if preparations were being made for an immediate start.

I had forgotten what she was like, but I found her a handsome little craft, with two cabins, and deck-room to accommodate four or five passengers; also I learned from a man employed on the quay close by that the motor was an American one of thirty horse-power. He told me as well, by way of gossip, that a rakish barge, moored with her pert brass nose almost on "Lorelei's" stern, had been hired, and would be towed by the owners of the motor-boat.

I didn't know what to make of this bit of information, as Robert had not mentioned a barge; but the skylight meant a studio, so I saw the man Starr's hand in the arrangement, and began to hate the fellow.

By the time I had loitered in the neighborhood for half an hour or more, it was noon, and it occurred to me that I might go and lunch at Miss Van Buren's hotel. But this would look like dogging the girl's footsteps, and eventually I decided upon a more subtle means of gaining my end.

Nevertheless, I strolled past the house; but, seeing nobody worth seeing, I reluctantly turned my steps farther on to a garden restaurant—a middle-class place, with tables under chestnuts and beeches or in shady arbors for parties of two or four.

It was early still, but the restaurant is popular, and all the small tables under the trees were appropriated. Fortunately, several arbors were empty, although one or two were engaged, and I walked into the first I came to.

For a few moments I was kept waiting, then a fluent waiter appeared to recommend the most desirable dishes of the day. His eloquence was in full tide, when a man paused before the entrance of my arbor, hesitated, and went on to the next.

"That is engaged, sir," called out the waiter.

"I don't understand Dutch," answered the new-comer in American-English. "Can you speak French?"

The waiter could, and did. The man—a good-looking fellow, with singularly brilliant black eyes and a fetching smile—explained that it was he who had engaged the arbor, that he was expecting a lady, and would not order luncheon until she joined him.

He sat down with his gray flannel back to me, but I could see him through the screen of leaves and lattice, and it was clear that he was nervous. He kept jumping up, going to the doorway, staring out, and returning to throw himself on the hard green bench with an impatient sigh. Evidently She was late.

An omelet arrived for me, and still my neighbor was alone; but I had scarcely taken up my fork when a light, tripping step sounded crisply on the crushed sea-shells of the path outside. A shadow darkened the doorway, and for an instant a pocket-edition of a woman, in a neat but well-worn tailor-made dress, hung on my threshold. Rather like a trim gray sparrow she was, expecting a crumb, then changing her mind and hopping further on to find it.

But the change of mind came only with the springing up of the young man in the adjoining arbor.

"Aunt Fay, is that you?" he inquired, in an anxious voice, speaking the name with marked emphasis.

"Oh!" chirped the gray sparrow, flitting to the next doorway, "I must have counted wrong. I saw a young man alone, and—Then you are my nephew—Ronald."

She also threw stress upon the name and the relationship, and, though I knew nothing of the face that lurked behind a tissue veil, I became aware that the lady was an American.

"Funny thing," I said to myself. "They don't seem to have met before. She must be a long-lost aunt."

My neighbor would have ushered his relative into the arbor, but she lingered outside.

"Come, Tibe," she cried, with a shrill change of tone. "Here, Tibe, Tibe, Tibe!"

There was a sudden stir in the garden, a pulling of chairs closer to small tables, a jumping about of waiters, a few stifled shrieks in feminine voices, and a powerful tan-colored bulldog, with a peculiarly concentrated and earnest expression on his countenance, bounded through the crowd toward his mistress, with a fine disregard of obstacles. Evidently, if there was any dodging to be done, he had been brought up to expect others to do it; and I thought the chances were that he would seldom be disappointed.



"Good heavens!" exclaimed Nephew Ronald, as the monster cannoned against him. "You didn't mention This."

"No; I knew you were sure to love him. I wouldn't have anything to do with a creature who didn't. Isn't he exquisite?"

"He's a dream," said the young man; but he did not specify what kind of dream.

"Where I go, there Tibe goes also," went on the lady. "His name is Tiberius, but it's rather long to say when he's doing something that you want him to stop. He'll lunch with us like a perfect gentleman. Oh, he is more flower than dog! Tibe, come away from that door instantly!"

The flower had paused to see whether he approved of my lunch, and from the way he turned back a protruding black drapery of underlip from a pair of upstanding ivory tusks, I judged that neither it nor I found favor in his eyes. Perhaps he resented laughter in mine; yet there was something after all in the flower simile, if not precisely what the blossom's adoring mistress meant. Tibe's face distinctly resembled a pansy, but an appalling pansy, the sort of pansy you would not like to meet in the dark.

Whatever may have been his opinion of me, he had to be dragged by the collar from my door, and later I caught the glitter of his gaze through the lattice.

Aunt Fay slipped in between bench and table, sitting down opposite to me, and when the nephew took his old place I had glimpses of her over his shoulder.

She was unfastening her veil. Now it had fallen. Alas for any hopes which the trim, youthful figure might have raised! Her thick gray hair was plastered down over temples, cheeks, and ears, and a pair of uncommonly large blue spectacles left her eyes to the imagination.

"I began to be afraid there might have been some mistake in the telegram I sent, after I got your letter saying I mustn't come to your address," began Nephew Ronald, hastily, after a moment of silence that followed the dropping of the veil. "What I said was, 'Buiten Oord, third arbor on the left as you come in by main entrance, lunch quarter past twelve. Any cabman will know the place.' Was the message all right?"

"Yes," replied Aunt Fay; "but I suffer a little with my eyes. That's why I stopped when I came to the next arbor. I'm late, because darling Tibe ran away just as I was hailing a cab, so I had to let that one go, and rescue him from the crowd. Wherever he goes he has a throng round him. People admire him so much. Down, my angel! You mustn't put your feet on strange gentlemen's tables, when you're invited to lunch. He's hungry, poor lamb."

"I hope you are also," said Nephew, politely; but his voice was heavy. I wondered if he were disappointed in Aunt, or if it was only that the Pansy had got on his nerves. "Here's my waiter. We'll have something to eat, and talk things over as we lunch. There's a tremendous menu for a table d'hote meal—thoroughly Dutch. No other people could get through it and live. Probably you would prefer——"

"Let me see. Potage d'Artois; Caneton de Luxembourg; Soles aux fines herbes; Pommes Natures; Fricandeau de Veau; Haricots Princesse; Poulet roti; Compote; Homard frais; Sauce Ravigottes; Salad mele; Creme au chocolat; Fromage; Fruit. Humph, funnily arranged, isn't it? But Tibe and I have been living in furnished lodgings, and we—er—have eaten rather irregularly. I dare say between us we might manage the lunch as it is."

Nephew Ronald ordered it, and another silence fell. I think that he drummed on the table.

"We might as well get to business," suggested the lady. "Does the aunt engagement begin immediately?"

"I—er—there's one difficulty," faltered the young man. "Unfortunately I injudiciously let drop that my aunt was a fine woman."

"Really! You might better have waited till you made her acquaintance. You can't pick and choose in a hurry, when you must have a ready-made aunt, my dear sir. Myself, I prefer small women. They are more feminine."

"Please don't be angry. You see, it was like this. I said that, when I still hoped to have a real aunt on hand for my purpose. That was the way the scrape began. I inadvertently let out her name and a lot of things——"

"To the young ladies I'm to chaperon?"

"Yes, to the young ladies. If they remember the description——"

"You can say you referred to your aunt's character when you remarked that she was a fine woman."

"I suppose so" (still doubtfully). "But then there's another trouble, you know. I advertised in Het Nieus van den Dag for a Scotch aunt."

I moved suddenly, for a queer thought jumped into my head. The blue spectacles were focused on me, and there was a low murmur, to which the man responded in his usual tone. "No danger. Dutch. I heard him talking to the waiter."

Now, perhaps I should have called through the lattice and the leaves: "Combination of Dutch and English. Half and half. As much at home in one language as the other." But for several reasons I was silent. One was, that it was easier to be silent than to make a fuss. Another was that, if the suspicion which had just sprung into my head had any foundation, it was mine or any man's duty to know the truth and act upon it. So I sat still, and went on with my luncheon as my next door neighbors went on with theirs; and no one remembered my existence except Tibe.

"I've no moral objection to being a Scotch aunt," said the obliging lady.

"It's your accent, not your morals, that sticks in my throat."

"The latter, I trust were sufficiently vouched for in the letter from our American Consul here. You can call on him if you choose. Few ready-made aunts obtained by advertisement would have what I have to recommend me. As for a Scotch accent, I've bought Burns, and a Crockett in Tauchnitz, and by to-morrow I'll engage that no one—unless a Scotsman—would know me from a Scotswoman. Hoot, awa', mon. Come ben."

"But—er—my aunt's rather by way of being a swell. She wouldn't be found dead saying 'hoot, awa', 'or 'come ben.' There's just a little indescribable burr-r——"

"Then I will have just a little indescribable burr-r. And you can buy me a Tartan blouse and a Tam."

"I'm afraid a Tam wouldn't—wouldn't quite suit your style, or—or that of any well-regulated aunt; and a well-regulated aunt is absolutely essential to the situation. I——"

"Do you mean to insinuate that I am not a well-regulated aunt?" There was a rustling in the arbor. "Come, Tibe," the lady added in a firm voice, "you and I will go away and leave this gentlemen to select from all the other charming and eligible aunts who have no doubt answered his quite conventional and much-to-be-desired advertisement."

"For heaven's sake, don't go!" cried the man, springing to his feet. "There, your dog's got the duck. But it doesn't matter. Nobody else worth speaking of—nobody in any way possible—has answered my advertisement. I can't lose you. But, you see, I somehow fancied from your letter that you were large and imposing, just what I wanted; and you said you'd lately been in Scotland——"

"The accent was one of the few things I did not wish to bring away with me," sniffed the lady. "Under the table, Tibe; we're not going, after all, for the moment. And as you have the duck, you may as well eat it."

"Good dog," groaned the stricken young man. If he had not, to the best of my belief, been engaged in concocting a treacherous plot against one whom I intended to protect, I could have pitied him.

Both sat down again. There was a pause while plates were changed, and then the female plotter took up the running.

"I may be conceited," said she, "but my opinion is that you're very lucky to get me. I may not be Scotch, and I may not be a 'swell,' but I am—a lady."

"Oh—of course."

"What were the others like who answered your advertisement?"

"All Dutch, and spoke broken English, except one, who was German. She wore a reform dress, hunched up behind with unspeakable elastic things. You'd make allowances if you knew what I've gone through since the day before yesterday, when I found, after telegraphing a frantic appeal to my aunt in Scotland, that she's left home and they could give me no address. I've had an awful time. My nerves are shattered."

"Then you'd better secure peace by securing me. An aunt in the hand is worth two in the bush."

"A good aunt needs no bush. I mean—oh, I don't know what I mean; but, of course, I ask nothing better than to secure you."

"No; you mean you think you'll get nothing better. Ha, ha! I agree with you. But Tibe and I didn't come here to be played with. You're giving us a very good lunch, but I have his future and mine to think of. I admit, I'm in want of an engagement as a traveling companion to ladies in Holland; but you aren't the only person to whom it occurs to put ads in Dutch papers. If you'd searched the columns of Het Nieus van den Dag you might have seen mine. I have not been without answers, and I don't know that I should care to be an aunt, anyway. It makes one seem so old. What I came to say was that, unless you can offer me an immediate engagement——"

"Oh, I can and do. I beg of you to be my aunt from this moment."

"Tibe to travel with me and have every comfort?"

"Yes, yes, and luxury."

"A pint of warm milk every morning, half a pound of best beef or chicken with vegetables at noon, two new-laid eggs at——"

"Certainly. He has but to choose—he seems to know his own mind pretty well."

"I don't think it a subject for joking. That duck was close to the edge of the table. We'd better talk business. Your letter said a hundred gulden a week to a suitable aunt, and a two months' engagement certain. Well, it's not enough. I should want at least three hundred dollars extra, down in advance (I can't do it in gulden in my head) for your sake."

"For my sake?"

"Don't you see, to do you credit as a relative, I must have things, nice things, plenty of nice things? Tartan blouses, and if not Tams, cairngorms. Yes, a cairngorm brooch would be realistic. I saw a beauty yesterday—only two hundred gulden. No aunt of yours can go for a trip on the waterways of Holland unless she's well fitted out."

"I've been admiring the dress you are wearing. It's wonderfully trim."

"Thanks. But it happens to be about a hundred years old, and is the only one I have left. As for my hat, and boots—but Tibe and I have suffered some undeserved vicissitudes of late."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Of course you must have three hundred dollars to begin with."

"By the way, am I Mrs. or Miss?"

"You must know best as to——"

"I mean me in the part of your aunt."

"Oh, you're neither Miss nor Mrs."

"Really!"

"I mean, you're married, but you have a title."

"That will come more expensive. A person of title should have a diamond guard for her wedding-ring. You feel that, don't you?"

"Now you speak of it, I do."

"Would you like her to wear a cap for indoors?"

"Sounds as if she were a parlormaid——"

"Not at all. I'm sure a proper Scotch aunt would wear a cap."

"Mine's a proper Scotch aunt, and she doesn't. She's about forty, but she looks twenty-five. Nobody would believe she was anybody's aunt."

"But you want everybody to believe I'm yours?"

"Oh, have a cap by all means."

"It should be real lace."

"Buy it."

"And another to change with."

"Buy that too. Get a dozen if you like."

"Thanks, I will. I believe you just said the engagement dates from to-day?"

"Rather. I was going to tell you, I must have an aunt by this evening. She arrives from Scotland, you know."

"With her dog. That's easy."

"I hope the girls like dogs."

"They do if they're nice girls."

"They're enchanting girls, one English, one American. I adore both: that's why I'm a desperate man where an aunt's concerned. To produce an aunt is my one hope of enjoying their society on the motor-boat trip I wrote you about. I wouldn't do this thing if I weren't desperate, and even desperate as I am, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't have got an all-right kind of aunt, an aunt that—that——"