Dame Brinker took up the thread of the discourse.
"You'll pick out the lad quick enough, mynheer, because he's in company with Master Peter van Holp; and his hair curls all up over his forehead like foreign folk's, and, if you hear him speak, he talks kind of big and fast, only it's English; but that wouldn't be any hindrance to your honor."
The doctor had already lifted his hat to go. With a beaming face, he muttered something about its being just like the young scamp to give himself a rascally English name; called Hans "my son"—thereby making that young gentleman happy as a lord—and left the cottage with very little ceremony, considering what a great meester he was.
The grumbling coachman comforted himself by speaking his mind, as he drove back to Amsterdam. Since the doctor was safely stowed away in the coach, and could not hear a word, it was a fine time to say terrible things of folks who hadn't no manner of feeling for nobody, and who were always wanting the horses a dozen times of a night.
XLVI
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF THOMAS HIGGS
Higgs' factory was a mine of delight for the gossips of Birmingham. It was a small building, but quite large enough to hold a mystery. Who the proprietor was, or where he came from, none could tell. He looked like a gentleman—that was certain—though everybody knew he had risen from an apprenticeship; and he could handle his pen like a writing-master.