24 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



mass of dancing rosettes, scarlet for the most part, 

 though at the far corner of the field there was a 

 narrow strip of ivory-white ones, a beautiful colour 

 contrast. 



We were still looking at the flowers when the 

 pastor found us, and carried us home to the Pastorie 

 to tea. Tea in handleless cups, brought from China, 

 long before the ports were open to any but the 

 sturdy old Dutch traders, and handed down from 

 mother to daughter without written bequest, but 

 inalienable as an English coronet. The maid- 

 servant, I remember, brought in her cup, not a 

 little handleless one, but a good substantial young 

 basin, and her mistress filled it from the pot when 

 we had all been served. She was a rosy-cheeked 

 bare-armed maid, close relation, one might think, to 

 Miss Matty's invaluable Martha, or, in appearance, 

 to Peggotty of greater fame. Like Martha in her 

 taste for the lads, so her mistress said — a perhaps 

 excusable fault, seeing that many of the water- 

 going profession — a class notoriously adept at 

 love-making— were always coming and going to 

 the otherwise quiet little village. Like Martha, 

 too, she was in her unabashed interest in strangers. 

 It was the most wide-eyed attention she bestowed 

 on me, and with the most obvious reluctance that 



