“Surely, sweetheart. There, good vrouw, say no more, but leave the little one in peace. A promise thou wouldst not have her break.”
“Some there be better broken than kept; but whom promised she?”
Katrina was silent, and now even her father looked grave. “Speak, mijn kind; whom didst thou promise?”
“I cannot tell.”
“See you, Jacobus, ’tis stubborn she is, and wrong it looks. But list, Katrina; you shall speak this minute, or else to your chamber go, and there spend your New-Year’s Day.”
At this mynheer puffed grimly at his pipe, and Gretel would have remonstrated, but without a word Katrina turned and left the parlor. Ascending to her little attic-room, she removed her holiday finery, and sat sadly down to work on her Flemish lace, trying to console herself by repeating: “Right am I, and I know I am right. A promise once given must not broken be,” while the New-Year callers came and went, and the sound of merry greetings floated up from below.
So it was scarce a happy New-Year, and the little weathercock must have pointed very much to the east if he considered the way the wind blew within-doors, for even Jan turned fractious, and declared, “There was no fun in calling on a parcel of old vrouws,” and he should go to the turkey-shooting at Beekman’s Swamp instead. But this his mother forbade. “Shoot you will not this day,” she said, “for at fourteen, like a gentleman and a good Hollander should you behave. So start at once, and my greetings bear to the Van Pelts and Vander Voorts and Mistress Hogeboom,” while his father carried him off with him to call on the dominie’s wife.
This visit over, however, they parted company, and Jan lingered long in the market-place to see the darkies dance to the rude music of horns and tom-toms. Here he encountered two of his chums, Nicholas Van Ripper and Rem Hochstrasser, carrying guns on their shoulders.
“Thee, Jan? Good!” they cried. “Now come with us to the turkey-shooting. A prize thou art sure to win.”
“But I started the New-Year visits to make!” said Jan.