“O mynheer, I am all alone in the world,” she answered, her blue misty eyes filled with tears. “I had a month ago a dear, good, kind father, but he has died, and I am indeed desolate. I always believed him rich, and to these things,” with a gesture that included her dress and the ornaments on the table, “I have ever been accustomed. Thus I ordered without consideration such clothes as I thought needful. And then I found there was nothing for me—not a hundred guilders to call my own when all was paid.”
“But what brought you to Utrecht?”
“He sent me here, mynheer. In his last illness, only of three days’ duration, he bade me gather all together and come to this city, where I was to ask for a Mevrouw Baake, his cousin.”
“Mevrouw Baake, of the Sigaren Fabrijk,” said Dortje, in an aside, to the others. “I lived servant with her before I came here.”
“I had heard very little about her, only my father had sometimes mentioned his cousin to me; they had once been betrothed,” the stranger continued. “But when I reached Utrecht I found she was dead—two years dead; but we had never heard of it.”
“Dear, dear, dear!” exclaimed the professor, pityingly. “Well, you had better let Koosje put you to bed, and we will see what can be done for you in the morning.”
“Am I to make up a bed?” Koosje asked, following him along the passage.
The professor wheeled round and faced her.
“She had better sleep in the guest room,” he said, thoughtfully, regardless of the cold which struck to his slippered feet from the marble floor. “That is the only room which does not contain specimens that would probably frighten the poor child. I am very much afraid, Koosje,” he concluded, doubtfully, “that she is a lady; and what we are to do with a lady I can’t think.”
With that the old gentleman shuffled off to his cosey room, and Koosje turned back to her kitchen.