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

This last was addressed to the son and did not sound half as fierce as it looks in print. The rascal and Raff soon understood each other perfectly.

“I’m loath to leave the dikes,” said the latter, after they had talked together awhile, “but it is such a good offer, mynheer, I’d be robbing my family if I let it go past me.”

Take a long look at Hans as he sits there staring gratefully at the meester, for you shall not see him again for many years.

And Gretel – ah, what a vista of puzzling work suddenly opens before her! Yes, for dear Hans’s sake she will study now. If he really is to be a meester, his sister must not shame his greatness[464].

How faithfully those glancing eyes shall yet seek for the jewels that lie hidden in rocky schoolbooks! And how they shall yet brighten and droop at the coming of one whom she knows of now only as the boy who wore a red cap on that wonderful day when she found the silver skates in her apron!

But the doctor and Laurens are going. Dame Brinker is making her best curtsy. Raff stands beside her, looking every inch a man as he grasps the meester’s hand. Through the open cottage door we can look out upon the level Dutch landscape, all alive with the falling snow.

Conclusion

Our story is nearly told. Time passes in Holland just as surely and steadily as here. In that respect no country is odd.

To the Brinker family it has brought great changes. Hans has spent the years faithfully and profitably, conquering obstacles as they arose and pursuing one object with all the energy of his nature. If often the way has been rugged, his resolution has never failed. Sometimes he echoes, with his good friend, the words said long ago in that little cottage near Broek: “Surgery is an ugly business,” but always in his heart of hearts[465] lingers the echo of those truer words: “It is great and noble! It awakes a reverence for God’s work!”

Were you in Amsterdam today, you might see the famous Dr. Brinker riding in his grand coach to visit his patients, or, it might be, you would see him skating with his own boys and girls upon the frozen canal. For Annie Bouman, the beautiful, frank-hearted peasant girl, you would inquire in vain; but Annie Brinker, the vrouw of the great physician, is very like her – only, as Hans says, she is even lovelier, wiser, more like a fairy godmother than ever.

Peter van Holp, also, is a married man. I could have told you before that he and Hilda would join hands and glide through life together, just as years ago they skimmed side by side over the frozen sunlit river.

At one time, I came near hinting that Katrinka and Carl would join hands. It is fortunate that the report was not started, for Katrinka changed her mind and is single to this day. The lady is not quite so merry as formerly, and, I grieve to say[466], some of the tinkling bells are out of tune. But she is the life of her social circle, still. I wish she would be in earnest, just for a little while, but no; it is not in her nature. Her cares and sorrows do nothing more than disturb the tinkling; they never waken any deeper music.

Rychie’s soul has been stirred to its depths during these long years. Her history would tell how seed carelessly sown is sometimes reaped in anguish and how a golden harvest may follow a painful planting. If I mistake not, you may be able to read the written record before long; that is, if you are familiar with the Dutch language. In the witty but earnest author whose words are welcomed to this day in thousands of Holland homes, few could recognize the haughty, flippant Rychie who scoffed at little Gretel.

Lambert van Mounen and Ludwig van Holp are good Christian men and, what is more easily to be seen at a glance, thriving citizens. Both are dwellers in Amsterdam, but one clings to the old city of that name and the other is a pilgrim to the new. Van Mounen’s present home is not far from Central Park, and he says if the New Yorkers do their duty the park will in time equal his beautiful Bosch, near The Hague. He often thinks of the Katrinka of his boyhood, but he is glad now that Katrinka, the woman, sent him away, though it seemed at the time his darkest hour. Ben’s sister Jenny has made him very happy, happier than he could have been with anyone else in the wide world.

Carl Schummel has had a hard life. His father met with reverses in business, and as Carl had not many warm friends, and, above all, was not sustained by noble principles[467], he has been tossed about by fortune’s battledore until his gayest feathers are nearly all knocked off. He is a bookkeeper in the thriving Amsterdam house of Boekman and Schimmelpenninck. Voostenwalbert, the junior partner, treats him kindly; and he, in turn, is very respectful to the “monkey with a long name for a tail.”