“Dear heart,” said Margaret sorrowfully, “why can you not say to yourself, now I am her little brother, and she is my old, married sister, worn down with care? Say so, and I will indulge thee, and pet thee, and make thee happier than a prince.”
“Well, I will,” said Luke savagely, “sooner than keep away from you altogether. But above all give me something to do. Perchance I may have better luck this time.”
“Get me my marriage lines,” said Margaret, turning sad and gloomy in a moment.
“That is as much as to say, get me him! for where they are, he is.”
“Not so. He may refuse to come nigh me; but certes he will not deny a poor woman, who loved him once, her lines of betrothal. How can she go without them into any honest man's house?”
“I'll get them you if they are in Holland,” said Luke.
“They are as like to be in Rome,” replied Margaret.
“Let us begin with Holland,” observed Luke prudently.
The slave of love was furnished with money by his soft tyrant, and wandered hither and thither, Coopering, and carpentering, and looking for Gerard. “I can't be worse if I find the vagabone,” said he, “and I may be a hantle better.”
The months rolled on, and Sybrandt improved in spirit, but not in body; he was Margaret's pensioner for life; and a long-expected sorrow fell upon poor Catherine, and left her still more bowed down; and she lost her fine hearty bustling way, and never went about the house singing now; and her nerves were shaken, and she lived in dread of some terrible misfortune falling on Cornelis. The curse was laid on him as well as Sybrandt. She prayed Eli, if she had been a faithful partner all these years, to take Cornelis into his house again, and let her live awhile at Rotterdam.