"Perhaps she is English," suggested Metje, who had never seen any one from England, but had vaguely heard that it was an odd country quite different from Friesland.
The mother shook her head: "She is not English. I have seen one English that time that thy father and I went to Haarlem about thy grand-uncle's inheritance. It was a woman, and she was not at all like this girl. Metje, but that thou wouldst laugh, and Father Pettrie might reprove me for vain imaginations, I should guess her to be one of those mermaidens of whom our forefathers have told us. There are such creatures,—my mother's great-aunt saw one with her own eyes, and wrote it down, and my mother kept the paper. Often have I read it over. It was off the Texel."
"Could she really be that? Why, it would be better—more interesting, I mean—than to have her an Englishwoman," cried Metje. "We would teach her to spin, to knit. She should go with us to church and learn the Ave. Would it not be a good and holy work, mother, to save the soul of a poor wild thing from the waves where they know not how to pray?"
"Perhaps," replied the Vrow, doubtfully. She could not quite accustom herself to her own suggestion, yet could not quite dismiss it from her mind.
The father and Voorst now came in, and supper, delayed till after its usual time by the pressing needs of the stranger, must be got ready in haste.
Metje fell to slicing the black loaf, Jacqueline stirred the porridge, while the mother herself presided over the pot of cabbage-soup which had been stewing over the fire since early morning. Voorst, meanwhile, having nothing to do but to wait, sat and looked furtively at the strange girl. She did not seem to notice him, but remained motionless in the chimney-corner, only now and then giving a startled sudden glance about the room, like some wild creature caught in a trap. Voorst thought he had never seen anything so plaintive as her large, frightened eyes, or so wonderful as the thick plait of hair which, as she sat, lay on the ground, and was of the strangest pale color, like flax on which a greenish reflection is accidentally thrown. It was no more like Metje's ruddy locks, or the warm fairness of Jacqueline's braids, than moonlight is like dairy butter, he said to himself.
Supper ready, Metje took the girl's hand and led her to the table. She submitted to be placed on a wooden stool, and looked curiously at the bowl of steaming broth which was set before her; but she made no attempt to eat it, and seemed not to know the use of her spoon. Metje tried to show her how to hold it, but she only moaned restlessly, and, as soon as the family moved after the father had pronounced the Latin grace which Father Pettrie taught all his flock to employ, she slipped from her seat and stumbled awkwardly across the floor toward the fire, which seemed to have a fascination for her.
"Poor thing! she seems unlearnt in Christian ways," said Goodman Huyt; but later, when his wife confided to him her notion as to the stranger's uncanny origin, he looked perplexed, crossed himself, and said he would speak to the priest in the morning. It was no time for fetching heathen folk into homes, he remarked, still less those who were more fish than folk; as for mermaids, if such things there might be, they were no better in his opinion than dolphins or mackerel, and he did not care to countenance them.
Father Pettrie was duly consulted. He scouted the mermaid theory, and, as the Vrow had foreboded, gave her a reprimand for putting such ideas into the mind of her family.
The girl was evidently a foreigner from some far distant country, he said, a Turk it might be, or a daughter of that people, descended from Ishmael, who held rule in the land of the Holy Sepulchre. All the more it became a duty to teach her Christian ways and bring her into the true fold; and he bade Goodman Huyt to keep her till such time as her friends should be found, to treat her kindly, and make sure that she was brought regularly to church and taught religion and her duty.