“They do do that,” she admitted; “they just worship propriety and the correct, and have the greatest notion of the importance of their neighbours’ eyes.  It is a perfect treat to be out alone, and not have to regard them—­this is the first time I have been out alone since I have been here.”

“Rather hard; I thought every one had—­er—­time off.”

“An evening out?” she suggested.  “I believe the number of evenings out is regulated by the number of applications for the post when vacant; cooks could get more evenings than housemaids, and nursery governesses might naturally expect a minus number, if that were possible.  There would be lots of applications for my post, so I can’t expect many evenings; however, I have thought of a plan by which I can get out again and again!”

“What will you do?” he inquired.

“I shall get Denah—­she is one of the girls who went for the excursion—­to come and teach Mevrouw a new crochet pattern after dinner of a day.  It will take ages, Mevrouw learns very slowly, and Denah will know better than to hurry matters; she admires Mijnheer Joost, the Van Heigens’ son, and she will be only too delighted to have an excuse to come to the house.”

“And if she is there you will have a little leisure?  Some one always has to be on duty?  Is that it?”

Julia laughed softly.  “If she is there,” she said, “she will want me out of the way, and I am not satisfactorily out of the way when I am anywhere on the premises.  Not that Mijnheer Joost talks to me when I am there, or would talk to her if I were not; she just mistrusts every unmarried female by instinct.”

“A girl’s instinct in such matters is not always wrong,” Rawson-Clew observed.

But if he thought Julia had any mischievous propensities of that sort he was mistaken.  “I should not think of interfering in such an affair,” she said; “why, it would be the most suitable thing in the world, as suitable as it is for my handsome and able sister to marry the ambitious and able nephew of a bishop; they are the two halves that make one whole.  Denah and Joost would live a perfectly ideal pudding life; he with his flowers—­that is his work, you know; he cares for nothing besides, really—­and she with her housekeeping.  He with a little music for relaxation, she with her neighbours and accomplishments; it would be as neat and complete and suitable as anything could be.”

“And that commends it to you?  I should have imagined that what was incongruous and odd pleased you better.”

“I like that too,” she was obliged to admit, “though best when the people concerned don’t see the incongruity; but I don’t really care either way, whether things are incongruous or suitable, I enjoy both, and should never interfere so long as they don’t upset my concerns and the end in view.”

He looked at her curiously; again it seemed he was at fault; she was not merely a wayward girl in revolt against convention, saying what she deemed daring for the sake of saying it, and in the effort to be original.  She was not posing as a Bohemian any more than she was truly one.