"Why," now quite at home with his newly evolved notion, "you've no idea the stir the tulip has made. We get letters from everywhere——"
"It didn't seem to me anything so extraordinary," said Grimm modestly, albeit hugely gratified. "I'll think over the plan. What have you been doing all day?"
Frederik glanced at the clock. It registered three minutes before nine.
"Oh, I've had a busy morning," he answered. "In the packing house. Lots of orders to attend to. It's never safe to trust the more important ones to subordinates."
"That's right," approved Grimm. "Fritzy, it does me good, all through, to see you taking hold of the business the way you're doing."
Further praise was cut short by old Marta, the housekeeper, who bustled in to attend to her regular nine o'clock duty of winding the chain-weighted Dutch clock.
As she drew up the weights with a grate and a whirr that made audible conversation quite out of the question, she formed a study, in clothes and visage, that might have stepped direct from a Franz Hals canvas.
There was nothing American or modern about the old woman. Nothing about her save her face had changed since the day, sixty years back, when an earlier Grimm, returning from a visit from the Fatherland, had brought her to Grimm Manor as maid for his young American wife. Her task accomplished, Marta turned dutifully to courtesy to her master.
"Huge moroche, Mynheer Grimm," she saluted him. "Komt ujuist eut di teum?"
"Ja," replied Peter, dropping into the tongue of his fathers, yet with an odd twinkle in his little eyes. "En ik bin hongerig.—Taking her morning exercise," he added, noting the performance with the clock weights.