The Awakening
An angel could not have entered the cottage more noiselessly. Gretel, not daring to look at anyone, slid softly to her mother’s side.
The room was very still. She could hear the old doctor breathe. She could almost hear the sparks as they fell into the ashes on the hearth. The mother’s hand was very cold, but a burning spot glowed on her cheek, and her eyes were like a deer’s—so bright, so sad, so eager.
At last there was a movement upon the bed, very slight, but enough to cause them all to start. Dr. Boekman leaned eagerly forward.
Another movement. The large hands, so white and soft for a poor man’s hand, twitched, then raised itself steadily toward the forehead.
It felt the bandage, not in a restless, crazy way but with a questioning movement that caused even Dr. Boekman to hold his breath.
“Steady! Steady!” said a voice that sounded very strange to Gretel. “Shift that mat higher, boys! Now throw on the clay. The waters are rising fast; no time to—”
Dame Brinker sprang forward like a young panther.
She seized his hands and, leaning over him, cried, “Raff! Raff, boy, speak to me!”
“Is it you, Meitje?” he asked faintly. “I have been asleep, hurt, I think. Where is little Hans?”
“Here I am, Father!” shouted Hans, half mad with joy. But the doctor held him back.
“He knows us!” screamed Dame Brinker. “Great God! He knows us! Gretel! Gretel! Come, see your father!”
In vain Dr. Boekman commanded “Silence!” and tried to force them from the bedside. He could not keep them off.
Hans and the mother laughed and cried together as they hung over the newly awakened man. Gretel made no sound but gazed at them all with glad, startled eyes. Her father was speaking in a faint voice.
“Is the baby asleep, Meitje?”
“The baby!” echoed Dame Brinker. “Oh, Gretel, that is you! And he calls Hans ‘little Hans.’ Ten years asleep! Oh, mynheer, you have saved us all. He has known nothing for ten years! Children, why don’t you thank the meester?”
The good woman was beside herself with joy. Dr. Boekman said nothing, but as his eye met hers, he pointed upward. She understood. So did Hans and Gretel.
With one accord they knelt by the cot, side by side. Dame Brinker felt for her husband’s hand even while she was praying. Dr. Boekman’s head was bowed; the assistant stood by the hearth with his back toward them.
“Why do you pray?” murmured the father, looking feebly from the bed as they rose. “Is it God’s day?”
It was not Sunday; but his vrouw bowed her head—she could not speak.
“Then we should have a chapter,” said Raff Brinker, speaking slowly and with difficulty. “I do not know how it is. I am very, very weak. Mayhap the minister will read it to us.”
Gretel lifted the big Dutch Bible from its carved shelf. Dr. Boekman, rather dismayed at being called a minister, coughed and handed the volume to his assistant.
“Read,” he murmured. “These people must be kept quiet or the man will die yet.”
When the chapter was finished, Dame Brinker motioned mysteriously to the rest by way of telling them that her husband was asleep.
“Now, jufvrouw,” said the doctor in a subdued tone as he drew on his thick woolen mittens, “there must be perfect quiet. You understand. This is truly a most remarkable case. I shall come again tomorrow. Give the patient no food today,” and, bowing hastily, he left the cottage, followed by his assistant.
His grand coach was not far away; the driver had kept the horses moving slowly up and down by the canal nearly all the time the doctor had been in the cottage.
Hans went out also.
“May God bless you, mynheer!” he said, blushing and trembling. “I can never repay you, but if—”
“Yes, you can,” interrupted the doctor crossly. “You can use your wits when the patient wakes again. This clacking and sniveling is enough to kill a well man, let alone one lying on the edge of his grave. If you want your father to get well, keep ‘em quiet.”
So saying, Dr. Boekman, without another word, stalked off to meet his coach, leaving Hans standing there with eyes and mouth wide open.
Hilda was reprimanded severely that day for returning late to school after recess, and for imperfect recitations.
She had remained near the cottage until she heard Dame Brinker laugh, until she had heard Hans say, “Here I am, Father!” And then she had gone back to her lessons. What wonder that she missed them! How could she get a long string of Latin verbs by heart when her heart did not care a fig for them but would keep saying to itself, “Oh, I am so glad! I am so glad!”
Bones and Tongues
Bones are strange things. One would suppose that they knew nothing at all about school affairs, but they do. Even Jacob Poot’s bones, buried as they were in flesh, were sharp in the matter of study hours.
Early on the morning of his return they ached through and through, giving Jacob a twinge at every stroke of the school bell, as if to say, “Stop that clapper! There’s trouble in it.” After school, on the contrary, they were quiet and comfortable; in fact, seemed to be taking a nap among their cushions.
The other boys’ bones behaved in a similar manner, but that is not so remarkable. Being nearer the daylight than Jacob’s, they might be expected to be more learned in the ways of the world. Master Ludwig’s, especially, were like beauty, only skin deep; they were the most knowing bones you ever heard of. Just put before him ever so quietly a grammar book with a long lessons marked in it, and immediately the sly bone over his eyes would set up such an aching! Request him to go to the garret for your foot stove, instantly the bones would remind him that he was “too tired.” Ask him to go to the confectioner’s, a mile away, and PRESTO! not a bone would remember that it had ever been used before.
Bearing all this in mind, you will not wonder when I tell you that our five boys were among the happiest of the happy throng pouring forth from the schoolhouse that day.
Peter was in excellent spirits. He had heard through Hilda of Dame Brinker’s laugh and of Hans’s joyous words, and he needed no further proof that Raff Brinker was a cured man. In fact, the news had gone forth in every direction, for miles around. Persons who had never before cared for the Brinkers, or even mentioned them, except with a contemptuous sneer or a shrug of pretended pity, now became singularly familiar with every point of their history. There was no end to the number of ridiculous stories that were flying about.
Hilda, in the excitement of the moment, had stopped to exchange a word with the doctor’s coachman as he stood by the horses, pommelling his chest and clapping his hands. Her kind heart was overflowing. She could not help pausing to tell the cold, tired-looking man that she thought the doctor would be out soon; she even hinted to him that she suspected—only suspected—that a wonderful cure had been performed, an idiot brought to his senses. Nay, she was SURE of it, for she had heard his widow laugh—no, not his widow, of course, but his wife—for the man was as much alive as anybody, and, for all she knew, sitting up and talking like a lawyer.
All this was very indiscreet. Hilda, in an impenitent sort of way, felt it to be so.
But it is always so delightful to impart pleasant or surprising news!
She went tripping along by the canal, quite resolved to repeat the sin, ad infinitum, and tell nearly every girl and boy in the school.
Meantime Janzoon Kolp came skating by. Of course, in two seconds, he was striking slippery attitudes and shouting saucy things to the coachman, who stared at him in indolent disdain.
This, to Janzoon, was equivalent to an invitation to draw nearer. The coachman was now upon his box, gathering up the reins and grumbling at his horses.
Janzoon accosted him.
“I say. What’s going on at the idiot’s cottage? Is your boss in there?”
Coachman nodded mysteriously.
“Whew!” whistled Janzoon, drawing closer. “Old Brinker dead?”
The driver grew big with importance and silent in proportion.
“See here, old pincushion, I’d run home yonder and get you a chunk of gingerbread if I thought you could open your mouth.”
Old pincushion was human—long hours of waiting had made him ravenously hungry. At Janzoon’s hint, his countenance showed signs of a collapse.
“That’s right, old fellow,” pursued his tempter. “Hurry up! What news?—old Brinker dead?”
“No, CURED! Got his wits,” said the coachman, shooting forth his words, one at a time, like so many bullets.
Like bullets (figuratively speaking) they hit Janzoon Kolp. He jumped as if he had been shot.
“Goede Gunst! You don’t say so!”
The man pressed his lips together and looked significantly toward Master Kolp’s shabby residence.
Just then Janzoon saw a group of boys in the distance. Hailing them in a rowdy style, common to boys of his stamp all over the world, weather in Africa, Japan, Amsterdam, or Paris, he scampered toward them, forgetting coachman, gingerbread, everything but the wonderful news.
Therefore, by sundown it was well known throughout the neighboring country that Dr. Boekman, chancing to stop at the cottage, had given the idiot Brinker a tremendous dose of medicine, as brown as gingerbread. It had taken six men to hold him while it was poured down. The idiot had immediately sprung to his feet, in full possession of all his faculties, knocked over the doctor or thrashed him (there was admitted to be a slight uncertainty as to which of these penalties was inflicted), then sat down and addressed him for all the world like a lawyer. After that he had turned and spoken beautifully to his wife and children. Dame Brinker had laughed herself into violent hysterics. Hans had said, “Here I am, Father, your own dear son!” And Gretel had said, “Here I am, Father, your own dear Gretel!” And the doctor had afterward been seen leaning back in his carriage looking just as white as a corpse.
A New Alarm
When Dr. Boekman called the next day at the Brinker cottage, he could not help noticing the cheerful, comfortable aspect of the place. An atmosphere of happiness breathed upon him as he opened the door. Dame Brinker sat complacently knitting beside the bed, her husband was enjoying a tranquil slumber, and Gretel was noiselessly kneading rye bread on the table in the corner.
The doctor did not remain long. He asked a few simple questions, appeared satisfied with the answers, and after feeling his patient’s pulse, said, “Ah, very weak yet, jufvrouw. Very weak, indeed. He must have nourishment. You may begin to feed the patient. Ahem! Not too much, but what you do give him let it be strong and of the best.”
“Black bread, we have, mynheer, and porridge,” replied Dame Brinker cheerily. “They have always agreed with him well.”
“Tut, tut!” said the doctor, frowning. “Nothing of the kind. He must have the juice of fresh meat, white bread, dried and toasted, good Malaga wine, and—ahem! The man looks cold. Give him more covering, something light and warm. Where is the boy?”
“Hans, mynheer, has gone into Broek to look for work. He will be back soon. Will the meester please be seated?”
Whether the hard polished stool offered by Dame Brinker did not look particularly tempting, or whether the dame herself frightened him, partly because she was a woman, and partly because an anxious, distressed look had suddenly appeared in her face, I cannot say. Certain it is that our eccentric doctor looked hurriedly about him, muttered something about “an extraordinary case,” bowed, and disappeared before Dame Brinker had time to say another word.
Strange that the visit of their good benefactor should have left a cloud, yet so it was. Gretel frowned, an anxious, childish frown, and kneaded the bread dough violently without looking up. Dame Brinker hurried to her husband’s bedside, leaned over him, and fell into silent but passionate weeping.
In a moment Hans entered.
“Why, Mother,” he whispered in alarm, “what ails thee? Is the father worse?”
She turned her quivering face toward him, making no attempt to conceal her distress.
“Yes. He is starving—perishing. A meester said it.”
Hans turned pale.
“What does this mean, Mother? We must feed him at once. Here, Gretel, give me the porridge.”
“Nay!” cried his mother, distractedly, yet without raising her voice. “It may kill him. Our poor fare is too heavy for him. Oh, Hans, he will die—the father will DIE, if we use him this way. He must have meat and sweet wine and a dekbed. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?” she sobbed, wringing her hands. “There is not a stiver in the house.”
Gretel pouted. It was the only way she could express sympathy just then. Her tears fell one by one into the dough.
“Did the meester say he MUST have these things, Mother?” asked Hans.
“Yes, he did.”
“Well, Mother, don’t cry, HE SHALL HAVE THEM. I shall bring meat and wine before night. Take the cover from my bed. I can sleep in the straw.”
“Yes, Hans, but it is heavy, scant as it is. The meester said he must have something light and warm. He will perish. Our peat is giving out, Hans. The father has wasted it sorely, throwing it on when I was not looking, dear man.”
“Never mind, Mother,” whispered Hans cheerfully. “We can cut down the willow tree and burn it, if need be, but I’ll bring home something tonight. There MUST be work in Amsterdam, though there’s none in Broek. Never fear, Mother, the worst trouble of all is past. We can brave anything now that the father is himself again.”
“Aye!” sobbed Dame Brinker, hastily drying her eyes. “That is true indeed.”
“Of course it is. Look at him, Mother, how softly he sleeps. Do you think God would let him starve, just after giving him back to us? Why, Mother, I’m as SURE of getting all the father needs as if my pocket were bursting with gold. There, now, don’t fret.” And, hurriedly kissing her, Hans caught up his skates and slipped from the cottage.
Poor Hans! Disappointed in his morning’s errand, half sickened with this new trouble, he wore a brave look and tried to whistle as he tramped resolutely off with the firm intention of mending matters.
Want had never before pressed so sorely upon the Brinker family. Their stock of peat was nearly exhausted, and all the flour in the cottage was in Gretel’s dough. They had scarcely cared to eat during the past few days, scarcely realized their condition. Dame Brinker had felt so sure that she and the children could earn money before the worst came that she had given herself up to the joy of her husband’s recovery. She had not even told Hans that the few pieces of silver in the old mitten were quite gone.
Hans reproached himself, now, that he had not hailed the doctor when he saw him enter his coach and drive rapidly away in the direction of Amsterdam.
Perhaps there is some mistake, he thought. The meester surely would have known that meat and sweet wine were not at our command; and yet the father looks very weak—he certainly does. I MUST get work. If Mynheer van Holp were back from Rotterdam, I could get plenty to do. But Master Peter told me to let him know if he could do aught to serve us. I shall go to him at once. Oh, if it were but summer!
All this time Hans was hastening toward the canal. Soon his skates were on, and he was skimming rapidly toward the residence of Mynheer van Holp.
“The father must have meat and wine at once,” he muttered, “but how can I earn the money in time to buy them today? There is no other way but to go, as I PROMISED, to Master Peter. What would a gift of meat and wine be to him? When the father is once fed, I can rush down to Amsterdam and earn the morrow’s supply.”
Then came other thoughts—thoughts that made his heart thump heavily and his cheeks burn with a new shame. It is BEGGING, to say the least. Not one of the Brinkers has ever been a beggar. Shall I be the first? Shall my poor father just coming back into life learn that his family has asked for charity—he, always so wise and thrifty? “No,” cried Hans aloud, “better a thousand times to part with the watch.”
I can at least borrow money on it, in Amsterdam! he thought, turning around. That will be no disgrace. I can find work at once and get it back again. Nay, perhaps I can even SPEAK TO THE FATHER ABOUT IT!
This last thought made the lad dance for joy. Why not, indeed, speak to the father? He was a rational being now. He may wake, thought Hans, quite bright and rested—may tell us the watch is of no consequence, to sell it of course! And Hans almost flew over the ice.
A few moments more and the skates were again swinging from his arm. He was running toward the cottage.
His mother met him at the door.
“Oh, Hans!” she cried, her face radiant with joy, “the young lady has been here with her maid. She brought everything—meat, jelly, wine, and bread—a whole basketful! Then the meester sent a man from town with more wine and a fine bed and blankets for the father. Oh! he will get well now. God bless them!”
“God bless them!” echoed Hans, and for the first time that day his eyes filled with tears.
The Father’s Return
That evening Raff Brinker felt so much better that he insisted upon sitting up for a while on the rough high-backed chair by the fire. For a few moments there was quite a commotion in the little cottage. Hans was all-important on the occasion, for his father was a heavy man and needed something firm to lean upon. The dame, though none of your fragile ladies, was in such a state of alarm and excitement at the bold step they were taking in lifting him without the meester’s orders that she came near pulling her husband over, even while she believed herself to be his main prop and support.
“Steady, vrouw, steady,” panted Raff. “Have I grown old and feeble, or is it the fever makes me thus helpless?”
“Hear the man!”—Dame Brinker laughed—“talking like any other Christian! Why, you’re only weak from the fever, Raff. Here’s the chair, all fixed snug and warm. Now, sit thee down—hi-di-didy—there we are!”
With these words Dame Brinker let her half of the burden settle slowly into the chair. Hans prudently did the same.
Meanwhile Gretel flew about generally, bringing every possible thing to her mother to tuck behind the father’s back and spread over his knees. Then she twitched the carved bench under his feet, and Hans kicked the fire to make it brighter.
The father was sitting up at last. What wonder that he looked about him like one bewildered. “Little Hans” had just been almost carrying him. “The baby” was over four feet long and was demurely brushing up the hearth with a bundle of willow wisps. Meitje, the vrouw, winsome and fair as ever, had gained at least fifty pounds in what seemed to him a few hours. She also had some new lines in her face that puzzled him. The only familiar things in the room were the pine table that he had made before he was married, the Bible upon the shelf, and the cupboard in the corner.
Ah! Raff Brinker, it was only natural that your eyes should fill with hot tears even while looking at the joyful faces of your loved ones. Ten years dropped from a man’s life are no small loss; ten years of manhood, of household happiness and care; ten years of honest labor, of conscious enjoyment of sunshine and outdoor beauty, ten years of grateful life—one day looking forward to all this; the next, waking to find them passed and a blank. What wonder the scalding tears dropped one by one upon your cheek!
Tender little Gretel! The prayer of her life was answered through those tears. She LOVED her father silently at that moment. Hans and his mother glanced silently at each other when they saw her spring toward him and throw her arms about his neck.
“Father, DEAR Father,” she whispered, pressing her cheek close to his, “don’t cry. We are all here.”
“God bless thee,” sobbed Raff, kissing her again and again. “I had forgotten that!”
Soon he looked up again and spoke in a cheerful voice. “I should know her, vrouw,” he said, holding the sweet young face between his hands and gazing at it as though he were watching it grow. “I should know her. The same blue eyes and the lips, and ah! me, the little song she could sing almost before she could stand. But that was long ago,” he added, with a sigh, still looking at her dreamily. “Long ago; it’s all gone now.”
“Not so, indeed,” cried Dame Brinker eagerly. “Do you think I would let her forget it? Gretel, child, sing the old song thou hast known so long!”
Raff Brinker’s hand fell wearily and his eyes closed, but it was something to see the smile playing about his mouth as Gretel’s voice floated about him like incense.
It was a simple air; she had never known the words.
With loving instinct she softened every note, until Raff almost fancied that his two-year-old baby was once more beside him.
As soon as the song was finished, Hans mounted a wooden stool and began to rummage in the cupboard.
“Have a care, Hans,” said Dame Brinker, who through all her poverty was ever a tidy housewife. “Have a care, the wine is there at your right and the white bread beyond it.”
“Never fear, Mother,” answered Hans, reaching far back on an upper shelf. “I shall do no mischief.”
Jumping down, he walked toward his father and placed an oblong block of pine wood in his hands. One of its ends was rounded off, and some deep cuts had been made on the top.
“Do you know what that is, Father?” asked Hans.
Raff Brinker’s face brightened. “Indeed I do, boy! It is the boat I was making you yest—alack, not yesterday, but years ago.”
“I have kept it ever since, Father. It can be finished when your hand grows strong again.”
“Yes, but not for you, my lad. I must wait for the grandchildren. Why, you are nearly a man. Have you helped your mother through all these years?”
“Aye and bravely,” put in Dame Brinker.
“Let me see,” muttered the father, looking in a puzzled way at them all, “how long is it since the night when the waters were coming in? ‘Tis the last I remember.”
“We have told thee true, Raff. It was ten years last Pinxter week.”
“Ten years—and I fell then, you say? Has the fever been on me ever since?”
Dame Brinker scarcely knew how to reply. Should she tell him all? Tell him that he had been an idiot, almost a lunatic? The doctor had charged her on no account to worry or excite his patient.
Hans and Gretel looked astonished.
“Like enough, Raff,” she said, nodding her head and raising her eyebrows. “When a heavy man like thee falls on his head, it’s hard to say what will come—but thou’rt well NOW, Raff. Thank the good Lord!”
The newly awakened man bowed his head.
“Aye, well enough, mine vrouw,” he said after a moment’s silence, “but my brain turns somehow like a spinning wheel. It will not be right till I get on the dikes again. When shall I be at work, think you?”
“Hear the man!” cried Dame Brinker, delighted, yet frightened, too, for that matter. “We must get him on the bed, Hans. Work indeed!”
They tried to raise him from the chair, but he was not ready yet.
“Be off with ye!” he said with something like his old smile (Gretel had never seen it before). “Does a man want to be lifted about like a log? I tell you before three suns I shall be on the dikes again. Ah! There’ll be some stout fellows to greet me. Jan Kamphuisen and young Hoogsvliet. They have been good friends to thee, Hans, I’ll warrant.”
Hans looked at his mother. Young Hoogsvliet had been dead five years. Jan Kamphuisen was in the jail at Amsterdam.
“Aye, they’d have done their share no doubt,” said Dame Brinker, parrying the inquiry, “had we asked them. But what with working and studying, Hans has been busy enough without seeking comrades.”
“Working and studying,” echoed Raff, in a musing tone. “Can the youngsters read and cipher, Meitje?”
“You should hear them!” she answered proudly. “They can run through a book while I mop the floor. Hans there is as happy over a page of big words as a rabbit in a cabbage patch; as for ciphering—”
“Here, lad, help a bit,” interrupted Raff Brinker. “I must get me on the bed again.”
The Thousand Guilders
None seeing the humble supper eaten in the Brinker cottage that night would have dreamed of the dainty repast hidden away nearby. Hans and Gretel looked rather wistfully toward the cupboard as they drank their cupful of water and ate their scanty share of black bread; but even in thought they did not rob their father.
“He relished his supper well,” said Dame Brinker, nodding sidewise toward the bed, “and fell asleep the next moment. Ah, the dear man will be feeble for many a day. He wanted sore to sit up again, but while I made show of humoring him and getting ready, he dropped off. Remember that, my girl, when you have a man of your own (and many a day may it be before that comes to pass), remember that you can never rule by differing; ‘humble wife is husband’s boss.’ Tut! tut! Never swallow such a mouthful as that again, child. Why, I could make a meal off two such pieces. What’s in thee, Hans? One would think there were cobwebs on the walls.”
“Oh, no, Mother, I was only thinking—”
“Thinking about what? Ah, no use asking,” she added in a changed tone. “I was thinking of the same a while ago. Well, it’s no blame if we DID look to hear something by this time about the thousand guilders but not a word—no—it’s plain enough he knows naught about them.”
Hans looked up anxiously, dreading lest his mother should grow agitated, as usual, when speaking of the lost money, but she was silently nibbling her bread and looking with a doleful stare toward the window.
“Thousand guilders,” echoed a faint voice from the bed. “Ah, I am sure they have been of good use to you, vrouw, through the long years when your man was idle.”
The poor woman started up. These words quite destroyed the hope that of late had been glowing within her.
“Are you awake, Raff?” she faltered.
“Yes, Meitje, and I feel much better. Our money was well saved, vrouw, I was saying. Did it last through all those ten years?”
“I—I—have not got it, Raff, I—” She was going to tell him the whole truth when Hans lifted his finger warningly and whispered, “Remember what the meester told us. The father must not be worried.”
“Speak to him, child,” she answered, trembling.
Hans hurried to the bedside.
“I am glad you are feeling better,” he said, leaning over his father. “Another day will see you quite strong again.”
“Aye, like enough. How long did the money last, Hans? I could not hear your mother. What did she say?”
“I said, Raff,” stammered Dame Brinker in great distress, “that it was all gone.”
“Well, well, wife, do not fret at that; one thousand guilders is not so very much for ten years and with children to bring up... but it has helped to make you all comfortable. Have you had much sickness to bear?”
“No, no,” sobbed Dame Brinker, lifting her apron to her eyes.
“Tut, tut, woman, why do you cry?” said Raff kindly. “We will soon fill another pouch when I am on my feet again. Lucky I told you all about it before I fell.”
“Told me what, man?”
“Why, that I buried the money. In my dream just now, it seemed that I had never said aught about it.”
Dame Brinker started forward. Hans caught her arm.
“Hist! Mother,” he whispered, hastily leading her away, “we must be very careful.” Then, while she stood with clasped hands waiting in breathless anxiety, he once more approached the cot. Trembling with eagerness he said, “That was a troublesome dream. Do you remember WHEN you buried the money, Father?”
“Yes, my boy. It was just before daylight on the same day I was hurt. Jan Kamphuisen said something, the sundown before, that made me distrust his honesty. He was the only one living besides Mother who knew that we had saved a thousand guilders, so I rose up that night and buried the money—blockhead that I was ever to suspect an old friend!”
“I’ll be bound, Father,” pursued Hans in a laughing voice, motioning to his mother and Gretel to remain quiet, “that you’ve forgotten where you buried it.”
“Ha! ha! Not I, indeed. But good night, my son, I can sleep again.”
Hans would have walked away, but his mother’s gestures were not to be disobeyed. So he said gently, “Good night, Father. Where did you say you buried the money? I was only a little one then.”
“Close by the willow sapling behind the cottage,” said Raff Brinker drowsily.
“Ah, yes. North side of the tree, wasn’t it, Father?”
“No, the south side. Ah, you know the spot well enough, you rogue. Like enough you were there when your mother lifted it. Now, son, easy. Shift this pillow so. Good night.”
“Good night, Father!” said Hans, ready to dance for joy.
The moon rose very late that night, shining in, full and clear, at the little window, but its beams did not disturb Raff Brinker. He slept soundly; so did Gretel. As for Hans and his mother, they had something else to do.
After making a few hurried preparations, they stole forth with bright, expectant faces, bearing a broken spade and a rusty implement that had done many a day’s service when Raff was a hale worker on the dikes.
It was so light out of doors that they could see the willow tree distinctly. The frozen ground was hard as stone, but Hans and his mother were resolute. Their only dread was that they might disturb the sleepers in the cottage.
“This ysbreeker is just the thing, Mother,” said Hans, striking many a vigorous blow, “but the ground has set so firm it’ll be a fair match for it.”
“Never fear, Hans,” she answered, watching him eagerly. “Here, let me try awhile.”
They soon succeeded in making an impression. One opening and the rest was not so difficult.
Still they worked on, taking turns and whispering cheerily to one another. Now and then Dame Brinker stepped noiselessly over the threshold and listened, to be certain that her husband slept.
“What grand news it will be for him,” she said, laughing, “when he is strong enough to bear it. How I should like to put the pouch and the stocking, just as we find them, all full of money, near him this blessed night, for the dear man to see when he wakens.”
“We must get them first, Mother,” panted Hans, still tugging away at his work.
“There’s no doubt of that. They can’t slip away from us now,” she answered, shivering with cold and excitement as she crouched beside the opening. “Like enough we’ll find them stowed in the old earthen pot I lost long ago.”
By this time Hans, too, began to tremble, but not with cold. He had penetrated a foot deep for quite a space on the south side of the tree. At any moment they might come upon the treasure. Meantime the stars winked and blinked at each other as if to say, “Queer country, this Holland! How much we do see, to be sure!”
“Strange that the dear father should have put it down so woeful deep,” said Dame Brinker in rather a provoked tone. “Ah, the ground was soft enough then, I warrant. How wise of him to mistrust Jan Kamphuisen, and Jan in full credit at the time. Little I thought that handsome fellow with his gay ways would ever go to jail! Now, Hans, let me take a turn. It’s lighter work, d’ye see, the deeper we go? I’d be loath to kill the tree, Hans. Will we harm it, do you think?”
“I cannot say,” he answered gravely.
Hour after hour, mother and son worked on. The hole grew larger and deeper. Clouds began to gather in the sky, throwing elfish shadows as they passed. Not until moon and stars faded away and streaks of daylight began to appear did Meitje Brinker and Hans look hopelessly into each other’s faces.
They had searched the ground thoroughly, desperately, all round the tree; south, north, east, west. THE HIDDEN MONEY WAS NOT THERE!
Glimpses
Annie Bouman had a healthy distaste for Janzoon Kolp. Janzoon Kolp, in his own rough way, adored Annie. Annie declared that she could not “to save her life” say one civil word to that odious boy. Janzoon believed her to be the sweetest, sauciest creature in the world. Annie laughed among her playmates at the comical flapping of Janzoon’s tattered and dingy jacket; he sighed in solitude over the floating grace of her jaunty blue petticoat. She thanked her stars that her brothers were not like the Kolps, and he growled at his sister because she was not like the Boumans. His presence made her harsh and unfeeling, and the very sight of her made him gentle as a lamb. Of course they were thrown together very often. It is thus that in some mysterious way we are convinced of error and cured of prejudice. In this case, however, the scheme failed. Annie detested Janzoon more and more at each encounter; and Janzoon liked her better and better every day.
He killed a stork, the wicked old wretch! she would say to herself.
She knows I am strong and fearless, thought Janzoon.
How red and freckled and ugly he is! was Annie’s secret comment when she looked at him.
How she stares and stares! thought Janzoon. Well, I am a fine, weather-beaten fellow, anyway.
“Janzoon Kolp, you impudent boy, go right away from me!” Annie often said. “I don’t want any of your company.”
Ha! Ha! laughed Janzoon to himself. Girls never say what they mean. I’ll skate with her every chance I can get.
And so it came to pass that the pretty maid would not look up that morning when, skating homeward from Amsterdam, she became convinced that a great burly boy was coming down the canal toward her.
Humph! if I look at him, thought Annie, I’ll—
“Good morrow, Annie Bouman,” said a pleasant voice.
How a smile brightens a girl’s face!
“Good morrow, Master Hans, I am right glad to meet you.”
How a smile brightens a boy’s face!
“Good morrow, again, Annie. There has been a great change at our house since you left.”
“How so?” she exclaimed, opening her eyes very wide.
Hans, who had been in a great hurry and rather moody, grew talkative and quite at leisure in Annie’s sunshine.
Turning about, and skating slowly with her toward Broek, he told the good news of his father. Annie was so true a friend that he told her even of their present distress, of how money was needed and how everything depended upon his obtaining work, and he could find nothing to do in the neighborhood.
All this was not said as a complaint but just because she was looking at him and really wished to know. He could not speak of last night’s bitter disappointment, for that secret was not wholly his own.
“Good-bye, Annie!” he said at last. “The morning is going fast, and I must haste to Amsterdam and sell these skates. Mother must have money at once. Before nightfall I shall certainly find a job somewhere.”
“Sell your new skates, Hans?” cried Annie. “You, the best skater around Broek! Why, the race is coming off in five days!”
“I know it,” he answered resolutely. “Good-bye! I shall skate home again on the old wooden ones.”
Such a bright glance! So different from Janzoon’s ugly grin—and Hans was off like an arrow.
“Hans, come back!” she called.
Her voice changed the arrow into a top. Spinning around, he darted, in one long, leaning sweep, toward her.
“Then you really are going to sell your new skates if you can find a customer?”
“Well, Hans, if you ARE going to sell your skates,” said Annie, quite confused, “I mean if you—well, I know somebody who would like to buy them, that’s all.”
“Not Janzoon Kolp?” asked Hans, flushing.
“Oh, no,” she said, pouting, “he is not one of my friends.”
“But you KNOW him,” persisted Hans.
Annie laughed, “Yes, I know him, and it’s all the worse for him that I do. Now, please, Hans, don’t ever talk any more to me about Janzoon. I hate him!”
“Hate him! YOU hate anybody, Annie?”
She shook her head saucily. “Yes, and I’ll hate you, too, if you persist in calling him one of my friends. You boys may like him because he caught the greased goose at the kermis last summer and climbed the pole with his great, ugly body tied up in a sack, but I don’t care for such things. I’ve disliked him ever since I saw him try to push his little sister out of the merry-go-round at Amsterdam, and it’s no secret up OUR way who killed the stork on your mother’s roof. But we mustn’t talk about such a bad, wicked fellow. Really, Hans, I know somebody who would be glad to buy your skates. You won’t get half a price for them in Amsterdam. Please give them to me. I’ll take you the money this very afternoon.”
If Annie was charming even when she said HATE, there was no withstanding her when she said PLEASE; at least Hans found it to be so.
“Annie,” he said, taking off the skates and rubbing them carefully with a snarl of twine before handing them to her, “I am sorry to be so particular, but if your friend should not want them, will you bring them back to me today? I must buy peat and meal for the mother early tomorrow morning.”
“My friend WILL want them,” Annie laughed, nodding gaily, and skated off at the top of her speed.
As Hans drew forth the wooden “runners” from his capricious pockets and fastened them on as best he could, he did not hear Annie murmur, “I wish I had not been so rude. Poor, brave Hans. What a noble boy he is!” And as Annie skated homeward, filled with pleasant thoughts, she did not hear Hans say, “I grumbled like a bear. But bless her! Some girls are like angels!”
Perhaps it was all for the best. One cannot be expected to know everything that is going on around the world.