Griselda was so interested in looking at all these queer machines, that she did not for some time observe the occupant of the room.  And no wonder; he was sitting in front of a little table, so perfectly still, much more still than the un-living figures around him.  He was examining, with a magnifying glass, some small object he held in his hand, so closely and intently that Griselda, forgetting she was only looking at a “picture,” almost held her breath for fear she should disturb him.  He was a very old man, his coat was worn and threadbare in several places, looking as if he spent a great part of his life in one position.  Yet he did not look poor, and his face, when at last he lifted it, was mild and intelligent and very earnest.

While Griselda was watching him closely there came a soft tap at the door, and a little girl danced into the room.  The dearest little girl you ever saw, and so funnily dressed!  Her thick brown hair, rather lighter than Griselda’s, was tied in two long plaits down her back.  She had a short red skirt with silver braid round the bottom, and a white chemisette with beautiful lace at the throat and wrists, and over that again a black velvet bodice, also trimmed with silver.  And she had a great many trinkets, necklaces, and bracelets, and ear-rings, and a sort of little silver coronet; no, it was not like a coronet, it was a band with a square piece of silver fastened so as to stand up at each side of her head something like a horse’s blinkers, only they were not placed over her eyes.

She made quite a jingle as she came into the room, and the old man looked up with a smile of pleasure.

“Well, my darling, and are you all ready for your fete?” he said; and though the language in which he spoke was quite strange to Griselda, she understood his meaning perfectly well.

“Yes, dear grandfather; and isn’t my dress lovely?” said the child.  “I should be so happy if only you were coming too, and would get yourself a beautiful velvet coat like Mynheer van Huyten.”

The old man shook his head.

“I have no time for such things, my darling,” he replied; “and besides, I am too old.  I must work—­work hard to make money for my pet when I am gone, that she may not be dependent on the bounty of those English sisters.”

“But I won’t care for money when you are gone, grandfather,” said the child, her eyes filling with tears.  “I would rather just go on living in this little house, and I am sure the neighbours would give me something to eat, and then I could hear all your clocks ticking, and think of you.  I don’t want you to sell all your wonderful things for money for me, grandfather.  They would remind me of you, and money wouldn’t.”

“Not all, Sybilla, not all,” said the old man.  “The best of all, the chef-d’oeuvre of my life, shall not be sold.  It shall be yours, and you will have in your possession a clock that crowned heads might seek in vain to purchase.”