Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates / Серебряные коньки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

This inn had once been a fine house, the home of a rich burgher, but having grown old and shabby, it had passed through many hands, until finally it had fallen into the possession of Mynheer Kleef. He was fond of saying as he looked up at its dingy, broken walls, “Mend it and paint it, and there’s not a prettier house in Leyden.” It stood six stories high from the street. The first three were of equal breadth but of various heights, the last three were in the great, high roof, and grew smaller and smaller like a set of double steps until the top one was lost in a point. The roof was built of short, shining tiles, and the windows, with their little panes, seemed to be scattered irregularly over the face of the building, without the slightest attention to outward effect. But the public room on the ground floor was the landlord’s joy and pride. He never said, “Mend it and paint it,” there, for everything was in the highest condition of Dutch neatness and order. If you will but open your mind’s eye[218], you may look into the apartment.

Imagine a large, bare room, with a floor that seemed to be made of squares cut out of glazed earthen pie-dishes, first a yellow piece, then a red, until the whole looked like a vast checkerboard. Fancy a dozen high-backed wooden chairs standing around; then a great hollow chimney place all aglow with its blazing fire, reflected a hundred times in the polished steel firedogs; a tiled hearth, tiled sides, tiled top, with a Dutch sentence upon it; and over all, high above one’s head, a narrow mantleshelf, filled with shining brass candlesticks, pipe lighters, and tinderboxes. Then see, in one end of the room, three pine tables; in the other, a closet and a deal dresser. The latter is filled with mugs, dishes, pipes, tankards, earthen and glass bottles, and is guarded at one end by a brass-hooped keg standing upon long legs. Everything is dim with tobacco smoke, but otherwise as clean as soap and sand can make it.

Next, picture two sleepy, shabby-looking men, in wooden shoes, seated near the glowing fireplace, hugging their knees and smoking short, stumpy pipes; Mynheer Kleef walking softly and heavily about, clad in leather knee breeches, felt shoes, and a green jacket wider than it is long; then throw a heap of skates in the corner and put six tired well-dressed boys, in various attitudes, upon the wooden chairs, and you will see the coffee room of the Red Lion just as it appeared at nine o’clock upon the evening of December 6, 184 – . For supper, gingerbread again, slices of Dutch sausage, rye bread sprinkled with anise seed, pickles, a bottle of Utrecht water, and a pot of very mysterious coffee. The boys were ravenous enough to take all they could get and pronounce it excellent. Ben made wry faces[219], but Jacob declared he had never eaten a better meal. After they had laughed and talked awhile, and counted their money by way of settling a discussion that arose concerning their expenses, the captain marched his company off to bed, led on by a greasy pioneer boy who carried skates and a candlestick instead of an ax.

One of the ill-favored men by the fire had shufled toward the dresser and was ordering a mug of beer, just as Ludwig, who brought up the rear, was stepping from the apartment. “I don’t like that fellow’s eye,” he whispered to Carl. “He looks like a pirate or something of that kind.”

“Looks like a granny!” answered Carl in sleepy disdain.

Ludwig laughed uneasily.

“Granny or no granny,” he whispered, “I tell you he looks just like one of those men in the ‘Voetspoelen.’[220]”

“Pooh!” sneered Carl, “I knew it. That picture was too much for you. Look sharp now, and see if yon fellow with the candle doesn’t look like the other villain.”

“No, indeed, his face is as honest as a Gouda cheese. But, I say, Carl, that really was a horrid picture.”

“Humph! What did you stare at it so long for?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

By this time the boys had reached the “beautiful room with three beds in it.” A dumpy little maiden with long earrings met them at the doorway, dropped them a curtsy, and passed out. She carried a long-handled thing that resembled a frying pan with a cover.

“I am glad to see that,” said Van Mounen to Ben.

“What?”

“Why, the warming pan. It’s full of hot ashes; she’s been heating our beds.”

“Oh, a warming pan, eh! Much obliged to her, I’m sure,” said Ben, too sleepy to make any further comment.