"Try to save you—as you saved Tibe."
XX
The Mariner was restless when we landed at the strange town of Monnikendam, and had the air—or I imagined it—of expecting something. As we walked through the wide Hoog Straat, he glanced absent-mindedly at the rows of beautiful seventeenth century houses, as if he feared to see Sir Alec MacNairne spring from behind some ornamented, ancient door, to accuse him as a perjured villain. Even the exquisite church tower, which has the semblance of holding aloft a carved goblet of old silver, did not appeal to him as it would if he had not been preoccupied. And instead of laughing at the crowds of children who clattered after us, waking the clean and quiet streets with the ring of sabots, he let them get upon his nerves. The girls were amused, however, and said that the little pestering voices babbling broken English without sense or sequence, were like the voices of the story in the "Arabian Nights"—haunting voices which tempted you to turn round, although you had been warned beforehand that, if you did, you would lose your human form and become a stone.
Tibe was the real attraction; a sadder and wiser Tibe than the Tibe of an hour ago, so sad and so wise that he did not even attempt to insist upon a friendship with three snow-white kids which joined the procession of his admirers.
Starr walked beside his aunt, as if to protect her in case of need; and once or twice when I tried to attract their attention to some notable façade or doorway, they were absorbed in conversation, and might as well have been in New York as in Monnikendam on the Zuider Zee.
When I had shown the party what I thought best worth seeing, I had to leave them to their own resources, and go alone to the boat. Hendrik could not navigate "Lorelei" and her square-shouldered companion through the series of locks by which the canal pours its soul into the heart of the Zuider Zee.
It took me half an hour to do it, and when I had brought the two craft to the last of the sea-locks, the four people and the one dog were waiting for me, the most persistent of the children hovering in the distance.
"It's a bigger town than Broek-in-Waterland, but not as interesting," said the Chaperon, looking back disparagingly in the direction of Monnikendam, "nor as clean. I saw five bits of paper in as many streets, and a woman we met didn't appear at all inclined to commit suicide because she'd desecrated the pavement by upsetting a pail of milk: whereas in Broek she'd have been hauled off to prison. Each house in Broek looked like a model in jewelry, and the whole effect was like a presepio cut in pasteboard; but the Monnikendam houses are big enough for people to lie out straight in, when they go to bed, which seems quite commonplace. Except for that church tower, and a few doorways, and the wonderful costumes, and the shoe-shop where they sell nothing but sabots, I don't see why we bothered to stop at Monnikendam."