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

“Indeed, it went in one ear and out of the other, for all I hindered it. Plague on people who can’t see a traveler in comfortable lodgings, but they must whisk him off before one can breathe[307].”

“A lady in Broek, did you say?”

“Yes.” Very grufly. “Any other business, young master?”

“No, mine host, except that I and my comrades here would like a bite of something and a drink of hot coffee.”

“Ah,” said the landlord sweetly, “a bite you shall have, and coffee, too, the finest in Leyden. Walk up to the stove, my masters – now I think again – that was a widow lady from Rotterdam, I think they said, visiting at one Van Stoepel’s if I mistake not.”

“Ah!” said Peter, greatly relieved. “They live in the white house by the Schlossen Mill. Now, mynheer, the coffee, please!”

What a goose I was, thought he, as the party left the Golden Eagle, to feel so sure that it was my mother. But she may be somebody’s mother, poor woman, for all that. Who can she be? I wonder.

There were not many upon the canal that day, between Leyden and Haarlem. However, as the boys neared Amsterdam, they found themselves once more in the midst of a moving throng. The big ysbreeker[308] had been at work for the first time that season, but there was any amount of skating ground left yet.

“Three cheers for home!” cried Van Mounen as they came in sight of the great Western Dock (Westelijk Dok). “Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted one and all. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

This trick of cheering was an importation among our party. Lambert van Mounen had brought it from England. As they always gave it in English, it was considered quite an exploit and, when circumstances permitted, always enthusiastically performed, to the sore dismay of their quiet-loving countrymen.

Therefore, their arrival at Amsterdam created a great sensation, especially among the small boys on the wharf.

The Y was crossed. They were on the Broek canal.

Lambert’s home was reached first.

“Good-bye, boys!” he cried as he left them. “We’ve had the greatest frolic ever known in Holland.”

“So we have.[309] Good-bye, Van Mounen!” answered the boys.

“Good-bye!”

Peter hailed him. “I say, Van Mounen, the classes begin tomorrow!”

“I know it. Our holiday is over. Good-bye, again.”

“Good-bye!”

Broek came in sight. Such meetings! Katrinka was upon the canal! Carl was delighted. Hilda was there! Peter felt rested in an instant. Rychie was there! Ludwig and Jacob nearly knocked each other over in their eagerness to shake hands with her.

Dutch girls are modest and generally quiet, but they have very glad eyes. For a few moments it was hard to decide whether Hilda, Rychie, or Katrinka felt the most happy.

Annie Bouman was also on the canal, looking even prettier than the other maidens in her graceful peasant’s costume. But she did not mingle with Rychie’s party; neither did she look unusually happy.

The one she liked most to see was not among the newcomers. Indeed, he was not upon the canal at all. She had not been near Broek before, since the Eve of Saint Nicholas, for she was staying with her sick grandmother in Amsterdam and had been granted a brief resting spell, as the grandmother called it, because she had been such a faithful little nurse night and day.

Annie had devoted her resting-spell to skating with all her might toward Broek and back again, in the hope of meeting her mother on the canal, or, it might be, Gretel Brinker. Not one of them had she seen, and she must hurry back without even catching a glimpse of her mother’s cottage, for the poor helpless grandmother, she knew, was by this time moaning for someone to turn her upon her cot.

Where can Gretel be? thought Annie as she flew over the ice; she can almost always steal a few moments from her work at this time of day. Poor Gretel! What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father! I should be woefully afraid of him, I know – so strong, and yet so strange!

Annie had not heard of his illness. Dame Brinker and her affairs received but little notice from the people of the place.

If Gretel had not been known as a goose girl, she might have had more friends among the peasantry of the neighborhood. As it was, Annie Bouman was the only one who did not feel ashamed to avow herself by word and deed the companion of Gretel and Hans.

When the neighbors’ children laughed at her for keeping such poor company, she would simply flush when Hans was ridiculed, or laugh in a careless, disdainful way, but to hear little Gretel abused always awakened her wrath[310].

“Goose girl, indeed!” she would say. “I can tell you that any of you are fitter for the work than she. My father often said last summer that it troubled him to see such a bright-eyed, patient little maiden tending geese. Humph! She would not harm them, as you would, Janzoon Kolp, and she would not tread upon them, as you might, Kate Wouters.”