“Marble!—­that’s a hard name,” returned the woman slightly smiling; “but a name is not a heart.  My parents were Dutch; and you may have heard how it was before the Revolution, between the Dutch and the Yankees.  Near neighbours, they did not love each other.  The Yankees said the Dutch were fools, and the Dutch said the Yankees were knaves.  Now, as you may easily suppose, I was born before the Revolution, when King George II. was on the throne and ruled the country; and though it was long after the English got to be our masters, it was before our people had forgotten their language and their traditions.  My father himself was born after the English governors came among us, as I’ve heard him say; but it mattered not—­he loved Holland to the last, and the customs of his fathers.”

“All quite right, mother,” said Marble, a little impatiently; “but what of all that?  It’s as nat’ral for a Dutchman to love Holland, as it is for an Englishman to love Hollands.  I’ve been in the Low Countries, and must say it’s a muskrat sort of a life the people lead; neither afloat nor ashore.”

The old woman regarded Marble with more respect after this declaration; for in that day, a travelled man was highly esteemed among us.  In her eyes, it was a greater exploit to have seen Amsterdam, than it would now be to visit Jerusalem.  Indeed, it is getting rather discreditable to a man of the world not to have seen the Pyramids, the Red Sea, and the Jordan.

“My father loved it not the less, though he never saw the land of his ancestors,” resumed the old woman.  “Notwithstanding the jealousy of the Yankees, among us Dutch, and the mutual dislike, many of the former came among us to seek their fortunes.  They are not a home-staying people, it would seem; and I cannot deny that cases have happened in which they have been known to get away the farms of some of the Netherlands stock, in a way that it would have been better not to have happened.”

“You speak considerately, my dear woman,” I remarked, “and like one that has charity for all human failing.”

“I ought to do so for my own sins, and I ought to do so to them of New England; for my own husband was of that race.”

“Ay, now the story is coming round regularly, Miles,” said Marble, nodding his head in approbation.  “It will touch on love next, and, if trouble do not follow, set me down as an ill-nat’red old bachelor.  Love in a man’s heart is like getting heated cotton, or shifting ballast, into a ship’s hold.”

“I must confess to it,” continued our hostess, smiling in spite of her real sorrows—­sorrows that were revived by thus recalling the events of her early life—­“a young man of Yankee birth came among us as a schoolmaster, when I was only fifteen.  Our people were anxious enough to have us all taught to read English, for many had found the disadvantage of being ignorant of the language of their rulers, and of the laws.  I was sent to George Wetmore’s school, like most of the other young people of the neighbourhood, and remained his scholar for three years.  If you were on the hill above the orchard yonder, you might see the school-house at this moment; for it is only a short walk from our place, and a walk that I made four times a day for just three years.”