There was cold sausage, potato salad, fresh herrings, and a strange dish made of buttermilk and buckwheat-flour, all boiled together and flavoured with green herbs. The Joost family thought it delicious, but Theodore said that it would take him some time to get used to it, and preferred the big loaves of rye-bread filled with raisins. As for cheeses, there was no end to the different kinds—and all of them excellent; while to wind up with, there was a delicious hot gingerbread and good coffee. Did it keep them awake? No, indeed, they dropped off to sleep in a moment, inside their big cupboard-beds, that had doors to them, instead of curtains, which made them look more like boxes than ever.
"Just come and look out the window, Theodore," said Pieter early the next morning. He was at the window and Theodore was out of bed in a moment and beside him.
"Why the whole square is filled with cheeses," he cried. So it was, for this was market-day, when the farmers—"boeren," they are called—from all the country roundabout bring in their cheeses to sell them in the market-place.
The boys scrambled into their clothes, and in a few minutes were walking among the great piles of cheeses. There were all kinds and shapes and sizes,—cheeses that looked like great red balls, yellow cheeses, white cheeses, green cheeses, flat, round, square and all sizes.
"I didn't suppose there were as many cheeses in the world," said Theodore, looking around him. "And the wagons, too, aren't they fine; they look as gay as circus wagons."
And so they did, for they were painted every colour under the sun; some of them even had flowers painted upon them; and they were all shapes, too; some were curved like shells, and others looked not unlike a boat on wheels.
"Let us see what is going on over there, where there is such a crowd of people," said Pieter, as he led the way to the other side of the square.
Here was the Weighing-House, where the cheeses were being weighed on funny old-fashioned scales, which looked as though they had been in use hundreds of years. The buyers, too, were testing the cheeses. They would taste a cheese and cut a small plug out of it to see if it were of good quality, and then they would put the plug back in place again, when the cheese, to all appearances, looked as it did before.
The bargaining over the cheeses took a long time, for the farmers are very careful to make a good deal for themselves, and they will not be hurried; and generally, when they are on their way home again, they look very well satisfied with themselves, and as contented as the portly Vrouw sitting beside them, or the "kinder," as they call the children, playing about in the bottom of the wagon.
"I don't suppose you boys have given up eating breakfast," a voice behind them said, and turning they saw Mynheer Joost.