“It will turn out all right. Just think of Telasco. He had a difficult task, too.”
“No! I will think of the girl. Good-evening, Femke——”
Walter received the hearty kiss that his story had earned him, and dreaming of Aztalpa, who was guarding the linen, he passed through the Ash Gate and turned towards home. The moon shone so brightly that he was annoyed not to have been able to remain with Femke. How much better, he thought, could he have told his story by moonlight! But he didn’t have the price—a stiver.
Chapter XV
The moon paused on the sky, as if she were weary of her lonely lot. Was she grieved because ungrateful humanity had fallen asleep and was ignoring her?—or because of the light borrowed from her for thousands of years, and none returned? She poured forth her sorrow in heart-breaking noiseless elegies till the night-wind was moved to pity. Whish! he went through the trees; and the leaves danced. Crash! he went over the roof; and the tiles flew away, and chimneys bowed meekly; and over the walls and ditches the sawmills danced with the logs they were to saw. There a girl sat sleeping. Could it be Femke? The linen danced about her to the music of the wind, the shirts making graceful bows and extending their sleeves. Nightcaps, dickeys and drawers danced the minuet; stockings, skirts, collars, handkerchiefs waltzed thicker and thicker around the sleeping girl. Her curls began to flutter—a smile, a sigh, and she sprang to her feet. A whirlwind caught her up and——
“O, heavens, Femke, Femke!” and Walter grasped at the apparition that was being borne away towards the moon in a cloud of stockings, socks, drawers, shirts and collars.
“Mother! Walter’s pinching me,” cried Laurens, the printer’s apprentice; and Juffrouw Pieterse groaned, that those boys couldn’t even keep quiet at night.
The “House of Pieterse” gathered at Walter’s bed. There was the noble mother of the family enveloped in a venerable jacket that fell in broad folds over a black woolen skirt. There was Trudie, with her stupid blue eyes; and Myntje and Pietje—but what am I talking about? In the new home Trudie had become Gertrude, like a morganatic princess in Hessia; and Myntje was now Mina, but preferred to be called Mine, as that sounded more Frenchy. But her stupid face remained unchanged. Pietje was now Pietro. Stoffel had said that was a very swell name.
Stoffel, too, had now appeared on the scene, to the great astonishment of his mother, who expected so much of him. This fine sense of propriety had been developed in the new home.