I never supposed it possible for the interior of a house to shine as this does. Everything shines, even things that no one expects to present a polished surface. For instance, does anybody (not Dutch) call upon walls to behave as if they were mirrors? Yet as I went up the rather steep stairs of the Villa van Buren I could see each movement I made, each rise and fall of an eyelash repeated on a surface of brilliantly varnished walnut.
"What wonderful wood!" I exclaimed.
"It is not real. It is paint," said pretty Lisbeth. "Do you not have walls like this?"
"Never," I replied.
"Every one does in Holland. We admire them," explained Lilli.
"But what a lot of work to keep them so bright."
"It is only done once a day," she said apologetically. "The servant does it when she has finished the windows."
"What—all the windows in the house—every day?"
"How else would they be clean?" asked Lisbeth, surprised.
There was no answer to this, from a Dutch point of view, so I remarked meekly that it must take all the servant's time.