"Father, haven't you got something for us to eat in your pocket?" asked Wilhelmina, coaxingly.
Mynheer smiled, and from away down in the depths of his pocket, he drew forth a big loaf of gingerbread. The children munched away at this favourite Dutch delicacy, and amused themselves by watching the people who were making the journey with them.
There were two fat old women, sitting side by side and knitting away as if for their lives. They nodded their heads every time they spoke, which made their long gold corkscrew ornaments in their caps bob up and down, and each had her feet on a little foot-stove as if it were midwinter. There were two little girls with their father, who looked like little dolls, in short red dresses, with dark green waists and short sleeves, and pretty aprons embroidered in many coloured silks, and many gold chains, and earrings reaching nearly down to their shoulders. They had a solid gold head-piece under their caps. The man had on velvet knickerbockers, nearly as broad as they were long, and two great silver rosettes fastened in his belt. There were big silver buttons on his jacket, and his cap must have been over a foot high.
The little girls were very shy, but when Wilhelmina offered them some of her gingerbread they soon made friends, and the three were soon chatting away like old acquaintances.
"Aren't they gorgeous?" whispered Pieter. "They are from the little island of Marken, near here, in the Zuyder Zee, and have on all their holiday clothes."
The island of Marken is like a big bowl, Mynheer told them, for all of it but the rim is lower than the waters which surround it. The rim is a high stone wall which was built to keep the water out. Everybody who lives there keeps a boat tied to their gate or door in order that they may have some means of escape if the wall should ever break.
"Just think of it! I should never sleep nights, if I lived there, for fear of waking up and finding myself floating about in the water. I should think the Dutch would be the most nervous people in the world, instead of the most placid," said Theodore.
"That danger does not often happen," said Mynheer. "But look how beautifully carved their shoes are. The men do it themselves during the long winter evenings, and take great pride in their work."
The little steamer puffed along the North Sea Canal, by which the big ships come right up to Amsterdam. All kinds of queer tublike boats, with big brown sails, tanned to preserve them from the damp, passed them, and soon they turned into the river Zaan.