Their mother was looking out for them.
"Where hast thou been, children?" she asked. "Ach!" with a look of satisfaction as Metje slipped the handle of the milk-pail between her fingers. "That is well! Little Karen was wearying for her supper. But who hast thou here?" looking curiously at the odd figure whom her daughters were supporting.
"Oh, mother, it is a poor thing that we saved from drowning in that pool over there," explained Metje, pointing seaward. "She is a stranger, from far away it must be, for she understands not our speech, and answers nothing when we ask her questions."
"Dear me! what should bring a stranger here at this stormy time? But whoever she is, she must needs be warmed and fed." And the good Vrow hurried them all indoors, where a carefully economized fire of peats was burning. The main stock of peats was under water still, and it behooved them to be careful of what remained, the father had said.
"We shall have to lend her some clothes," said Metje in an embarrassed tone. "Hers must have been lost in the water somehow."
"Perhaps she went in to bathe, and the tide carried them away," suggested Jacqueline.
"Bathe! In a tempest such as there has not been in my time! Bathe! Thou art crazed, child! It is singular, most singular. I don't like it!" muttered the puzzled mother. "Well, what needs be must be. Go and fetch thy old stuff petticoat, Metje, and one of my homespun shifts, and there's that old red jacket of Jacqueline's, she must have that, I suppose. Make haste, before the father comes in."
It was easier to fetch the clothes than to persuade the strange girl to put them on. She moaned, she resisted, she was as awkward and ill at ease as though she had never worn anything of the sort before. Now that they scanned her more closely there seemed something very unusual about her make. Her arms hung down,—like flippers, Metje whispered to her sister. She stumbled when she tried to walk alone; it seemed as though her feet, which looked only half developed, could scarcely support her weight.
For all that, when she was dressed, with her long hair dried, braided, and bound with a scarlet ribbon, there was something appealing and attractive in the poor child's face. She seemed to like the fire, and cowered close to it. When milk was offered her, she drank with avidity; but she would not touch the slice of black bread which Metje brought, and instead caught up a raw shell-fish from a pail full which Voorst had scooped out of the pool of sea-water which covered what had been the cabbage-bed, and ate it greedily. The mother looked grave as she watched her, and was troubled in her mind.
"She seems scarce human," she whispered to Metje, drawing her to a distant corner; though indeed they might have spoken aloud with no fear of being understood by the stranger, who evidently knew no Dutch. "She is like no maiden that ever I saw."