"And she was such a pretty bride, too, with a lovely dress; and there were flowers twined all about the carriage, and a wreath on the horse's head, and long streamers of white ribbon wound around the whip," she continued breathlessly.
"And we got more 'suikers' than any one else," put in Pieter.
"Yes, it was a gay party. I saw them pass by the house," said Mevrouw Joost, smilingly, as she ate a "suiker."
"Baby Jan must have one too," said Wilhelmina, as she went over to play with the baby who was kicking and crowing in his great carved cradle near the window. Jan was the household pet, and there had been a great celebration when he was a week old.
All the friends of the Joost family were invited to come and see the baby, a red pincushion having been hung out beside the front door to let everybody know that there was a new baby boy within. When the guests arrived, they were given rusks to eat, a kind of sweet bread, covered with aniseed and sugar, called "muisjes," which really means "mice." Before, when the friends had come to pay their respects to Wilhelmina and Pieter, there had been two kinds of "muisjes." One had a sort of smooth white icing on the top, and that was Wilhelmina's, while Pieter's rusks had lumps of sugar sticking up all over them.
The Dutch are the neatest people in the world. They are always washing and rubbing and dusting things, and one could no more find a spider's web in Mevrouw Joost's home than they could a white elephant.
The floor of the living-room was made of tiny red bricks, waxed and polished until they shone like glass. There was much heavy oak furniture, beautifully carved; a big round table stood in the centre, and on one side was a great dresser or sideboard. The chairs were solid and big, with high backs and straw seats, and some of them were painted dark green, with curious little pictures and decorations also painted on them.
One end of the square room was filled by what looked like two big cupboards with heavy green curtains hanging in front of them, but one of the curtains was drawn partly back and one could see that they were two great beds instead, built into the wall just like cupboards. These were the "show-beds," and were not for constant use, but mostly for ornament.
Mevrouw Joost was very proud of these beds and kept them always made up with her very finest linen, trimmed with rich lace, and her most brilliantly coloured embroidered coverlids, the whole being piled so high that the beds nearly reached the ceiling. There was barely enough room on top for the two enormous eider-down pillows, with gay covers and lace ruffles, which lay on each of the beds and completed their furnishings.
Some Dutch houses have a separate room for these "show-beds," which we should call a parlour, but Mevrouw Joost had her "show-beds" where she could enjoy their magnificence every day.