"I tell you what it is, Kat," said Kit; "I think we're big enough to have skates. Hans Hite isn't much bigger than I am, and he had skates last winter. I mean to ask Father this very day."
"Yah," said Kat—that is the way Dutch Twins always say yes—"Yah, and let us be very good and help mother all we can. I think maybe they will give skates to good Twins quite soon, even if we aren't very big yet—not big enough to be called Christopher and Katrina."
Vrouw Vedder was heating water and getting out her scrubbing brushes, so Kit and Kat knew that she was going to clean something.
"What are you going to scrub to-day, Mother?" asked Kit.
"I'm going to scrub the stable," said Vrouw Vedder. "It is getting too cold for the cows to stay all night in the pastures. Father means to bring Mevrouw Holstein in to-night, and I want her stable to be nice and clean for her."
"We'll help you," said Kit and Kat very politely.
"Good children!" their mother said. "You may carry the brushes." So they opened a door beside the fireplace, and walked right into the stable.
The stable was really a part of the house. There were two stalls in the stable. Vrouw Vedder took her pails of water and her brushes and began to scrub. She scrubbed the walls, and the sides of the stalls, and the floor. The Twins scrubbed, too, until they were tired; and the stable was so clean, you would have liked to live there yourself.
"Let's play out here," said Kat. "Let's play house."
"All right," said Kit. "I'll be the father, and you be the mother."