26 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



and she, no doubt, thought they would be happier 

 if they had not to keep such things in mind — 

 as her husband certainly was. He was most at 

 home, good man, dispensing the wisdom of com- 

 fort in his carpetless room, with his Bible and 

 tobacco lying together on the deal table, and 

 the smoke of his pipe and his guests' curling 

 to the sunny yellow - washed walls. The big 

 window of this room looked out on to the quay, 

 and from it the pastor could nod greeting to 

 half his parishioners of a morning, and see, if 

 he knew how to look, a good deal of their 

 doings. Even while we stood there that day, 

 one of us very conscious of the quiet brightness, 

 the simple saintliness of the place, the captain 

 of our lately left boat came up on the deck of 

 his little vessel. He came to greet a girl — the 

 fourth he had kissed, with the well - received 

 amorousness of at least betrothed rights, in my 

 short acquaintance with him. But the pastor 

 did not know that, it was not the sort of thing 

 he knew. He knew how the captain had carried 

 Johan Vorst's bulbs to Haarlem free that year, 

 when the poor fellow lost so much in the 

 floods ; how he brought the widow's firing every 

 winter, and how he gave a job to Crooked 



