“Then you shall not be disappointed, Mr. Bulstrode; Pinkster is neither more nor less than the Festival of Whit-sunday, or the Feast of Pentecost. I suppose we shall now hear no more of your saint.”
Bulstrode took this little punishment, which was very sweetly but quite steadily uttered, with perfect good-humour, and with a manner so rebuked as to prove that Anneke possessed great control over him. He bowed in submission, and she smiled so kindly, that I wished the occasion for the little pantomime had not occurred.
“Our ancestors, Miss Mordaunt, never heard of any Pinkster, you will remember, and that must explain my ignorance,” he said meekly.
“But some of mine have long understood it, and observed the festival,” answered Anneke.
“Ay, on the side of Holland—but when I presume to speak of our ancestors, I mean those which I can claim the honour of boasting as belonging to me in common with yourself.”
“Are you and Mr. Bulstrode, then, related?” I asked, as it might be involuntarily and almost too abruptly.
Anneke replied, however, in a way to show that she thought the question natural for the circumstances, and not in the least out of place.
“My grandfather's mother, and Mr. Bulstrode's grandfather, were brother and sister,” was the quiet answer.
“This makes us a sort of cousins, according to those Dutch notions which he so much despises, though I fancy it would not count for much at home.”
Bulstrode protested to the contrary, stating that he knew his father valued his relationship to Mr. Mordaunt, by the earnest manner in which he had commanded him to cultivate the acquaintance of the family the instant he reached New York. I saw by this, the footing on which the formidable Major was placed in the family, everybody seeming to be related to Anneke Mordaunt but myself. I took an occasion that very evening, to question the dear girl on the subject of her Dutch connections, giving her a clue to mine but with all our industry, and some assistance from Herman Mordaunt, who took an interest in such a subject, as it might be ex officio, we could make out no affinity worth mentioning.