(I didn't think it necessary to explain that, Knickerbocker as I was, I had absorbed this fact only the other day in "reading up" Holland.)
I was still more inclined to be reticent as to the newness of my knowledge when it appeared that Phil knew something of a poem on the subject by Mrs. Hemans. I could not allow my English stepsister to be better informed than I concerning a country which I already began to regard as a sort of confiscated family estate that ought to have been mine.
We were going fast now, so fast that the tears came to my eyes as the sweet-scented breeze rushed against my lashes.
"There's Schiedam," said Robert, indicating a town that stood up darkly out of the green plain. "You know, they make the famous 'Geneva' there."
We had never heard of Geneva in liquid form, but it appeared that "Geneva" or "Hollands" and gin were all the same thing; and Cousin Robert seemed almost offended when I said it was nice, with hot water and sugar, for a cold in the head.
I don't know whether the little Schie is really an idyllic stream, or whether the glamor of that azure day was upon it for me, but our first "waterway" seemed exquisite, as we spun along through country of wide horizons and magic atmosphere.
There were pretty houses, with balconies screened with roses—cataracts of roses, yellow, and pink, and white. We flew by lawns like the lawns of England, and thick, dark patches of forest, where the sun rained gold. There were meadows where a red flame of poppies leaped among the wheat, and quenched their fire in the silver river of waving grain. There were other meadows, green and sunny, where cows were being milked into blue pails lined with scarlet; and there were bowery tea-gardens divided into snug little arbors for two, where each swain could woo his nymph unseen by the next-door swain and nymph, though all couples were in sight from the river.
"Now we're coming to Delft," said Robert, long before I thought that we could be near that ancient town. "If Rudolph Brederode, who lends me this car, were here, he could tell much about the history," my cousin went on, mentioning his friend for the second time, as if with pride. "He is the sort of fellow who knows all the things to know, though he is a great sportsman, too. I never took interest in history, but William the Silent is our hero, so even I know of him and Delft. It was at Oude Delft he was murdered."
"He was one of my heroes when I was a little girl," said I. "I can recall my father telling splendid stories about him—as good as fairy tales. The best was about the way he earned the nickname of William the Silent."
I gazed with interest at the place where one of the greatest figures in the history of the world had lived and died.