“the windmills which met the eye at every turn,
with their great arms waving in the air.”
By this time they had made the landing. Then Katharine and Marie fell into each other’s arms and cried, gazed at in half-frightened curiosity by seven small, shy Hollanders, and in pitying patience by a very large colonel.
“Au revoir. I will call for Katharine this afternoon,” called Colonel Easton, when the time came for him to go on board again.
Katharine waved her handkerchief to her father as long as his boat was in sight.
“See, Miss Katharine,” said Marie—in Dutch now, for Katharine understood that language very well, Marie having spoken it to her from her infancy—“here is Gretel, and this is her little sister Katrine and her brother Jan. The others are their cousins. Come here, Lotten; don’t be shy. Ludolf, Mayken, Freitje, shake hands with my little American girl; they were all eager to come and meet you, dear, so I had to bring them.”
Katharine shook hands very soberly with the little group, and then walked off beside Marie, hearing nothing but the clatter-clatter of fourteen wooden shoes behind her.
Soon they arrived at the cottage, and in a moment seven pairs of klompen were ranged in a neat row outside a small cottage, while their owners all talked at once to two sweet-faced women standing in the doorway. These were Marie’s sisters, whose husbands were out on the sea fishing, and who lived close beside each other in two tiny cottages exactly alike.
“Oh,” exclaimed Katharine, as, panting and breathless, she joined the group, “do you always take off your shoes before you go into the house?”