“I can be your servant, mynheer,” she suggested.  “Indeed, I am a very useful girl, as you will find if you will but try me.”

Now, as a rule, the professor vigorously set his face against admitting young servants into his house.  They broke his china, they disarranged his bones, they meddled with his papers, and made general havoc.  So, in truth, he was not very willing to have Gertrude van Floote as a permanent member of his household, and he said so.

But Koosje had taken a fancy to the girl; and having an eye to her own departure at no very distant date,—­for she had been betrothed more than two years,—­she pleaded so hard to keep her, promising to train her in all the professor’s ways, to teach her the value of old china and osteologic specimens, that eventually, with a good deal of grumbling, the old gentleman gave way, and, being a wise as well as an old gentleman, went back to his studies, dismissing Koosje and the girl alike from his thoughts.

Just at first Truide, poor child, was charmed.

She put away her splendid ornaments, and some lilac frocks and black skirts were purchased for her.  Her box, which she had left at the station, supplied all that was necessary for Sunday.

It was great fun!  For a whole week this young person danced about the rambling old house, playing at being a servant.  Then she began to grow a little weary of it all.  She had been accustomed, of course, to performing such offices as all Dutch ladies fulfil—­the care of china, of linen, the dusting of rooms, and the like; but she had done them as a mistress, not as an underling.  And that was not the worst; it was when it came to her pretty feet having to be thrust into klompen, and her having to take a pail and syringe and mop and clean the windows and the pathway and the front of the house, that the game of maid-servant began to assume a very different aspect.  When, after having been as free as air to come and go as she chose, she was only permitted to attend service on Sundays, and to take an hour’s promenade with Dortje, who was dull and heavy and stupid, she began to feel positively desperate; and the result of it all was that when Jan van der Welde came, as he was accustomed to do nearly every evening, to see Koosje, Miss Truide, from sheer longing for excitement and change, began to make eyes at him, with what effect I will endeavour to show.

Just at first Koosje noticed nothing.  She herself was of so faithful a nature that an idea, a suspicion, of Jan’s faithlessness never entered her mind.  When the girl laughed and blushed and dimpled and smiled, when she cast her great blue eyes at the big young fellow, Koosje only thought how pretty she was, and it was must a thousand pities she had not been born a great lady.

And thus weeks slipped over.  Never very demonstrative herself, Koosje saw nothing, Dortje, for her part, saw a great deal; but Dortje was a woman of few words, one who quite believed in the saying, “If speech is silver, silence is gold;” so she held her peace.