“I do not mind it,” he said, blushing, and Julia decided that his father’s description of him as a retiring youth was really short of the mark.  They walked along together down the quiet, bright streets; there were many people about, but nobody in a hurry, and all in Sunday clothes, bent on visiting or decorous pleasure-making.  Everywhere was sunny and everything looked as if it had had its face washed; week days in the town always looked to Julia like Sundays, and Sundays, this Sunday in particular, looked like Easter.

In time they came to the trees that bordered the canal; there were old Spanish houses here, a beautiful purplish red in colour, and with carving above the doors.  Julia looked up at her favourite doorpiece—­a galleon in full sail, a veritable picture in relief, unspoiled by three hundred years of wind and weather.

“I think this is the most beautiful town I was ever in,” she said.  Her companion looked surprised.

“Do you like it?” he asked.  “It must be quite unlike what you are used to, all of it must be.”

“It is,” she answered, “all of it, as you say—­the place, the ways, the people.”

“And you like it?  You do not think it—­you do not think us what you call slow, stupid?”

She was a little surprised, it had never occurred to her that he, any more than the others, would think about her point of view.  “No,” she answered, “I admire it all very much, it is sincere, no one appears other than he is, or aims at being or seeming more.  Your house is the same back and front, and you, none of you have a wrong side, the whole life is solid right through.”

Joost did not quite understand; had she not guessed that to be likely she would hardly have spoken so frankly.  “I fear I do not understand you,” he said; “it is difficult when we do not know each other’s language perfectly.”

“We know it very well,” Julia answered; “as well as possible.  If we were born in the same place, in the same house, we should not understand it better.”

He still looked puzzled; he was half afraid she was laughing at him.  “You think I am stupid?” he said, gravely.

She denied it, and they walked on a little in silence.  They were in the quieter part of the town now and could talk undisturbed; after a little he spoke again, musingly.

“Often I wonder what you think of, you have such great, shining eyes, they eat up everything; they see everything and through everything, I think.  They sweep round the room, or the persons or the place, and gather all—­may I say it?—­like some fine net—­to me it seems they draw all things into your brain, and there you weave them and weave them into thoughts.”

Julia swallowed a little exclamation, and by an effort contrived not to appear as surprised as she was by this too discerning remark.  She was so young that she did not before know that children and child-like folk sometimes divine by instinct the same conclusions that very clever people arrive at by much reasoning and observation.  She felt decidedly uncomfortable at this explanation of Joost’s frequent contemplations of herself.