it that Miss Alida's proposition concerning
shopping was a necessary one. So the time went swiftly by, as she
noted down her own ideas on the subject; for in spite of all her
efforts, her mind would wander. She thought of Harry, she thought of
Rose, and she wondered how and when they would meet. So before she had
completed her list, the lunch bell rang; and she saw Antony at the
foot of the stairs waiting for her. He looked at her with proud
satisfaction, and slipping a piece of paper into her hand said: "You
will want lots of fine things, Yanna; you must let me get some of them
for you."

When they entered the dining-room there was an old gentleman
present--a fiery professor of some kind, who was sipping his bouillon,
and contradicting Miss Alida with an apparently equal satisfaction.
She seemed to be enjoying his unconventional manner. "Professor," she
was saying as they entered, "you seize every opportunity to lecture
the universe. Will you regard my adopted children? They are Mr. Antony
and Miss Adriana Van Hoosen--cousins, sir, and a little more than
cousinly." He bowed to the young people, smiled, nodded, and then said
brusquely to Miss Alida:

"Dutch, too, I perceive."

"Pure Dutch, Professor. Look at them. They may be descendants of John
de Bakker, or of Madame Wendelmost Klaas; or they may be of the same
blood as the Cromelins, Laboucheres, and Van Overzees, for aught even
your wisdom can tell. For the race is pure on their side."

"And all is race. There is no other truth; because it includes all
others. I admire the Dutch, madame; and I am lost in wonder when I
consider Holland."

"You may well be that, Professor," cried Miss Alida, as she lifted
daintily for him a Joseph-portion of the tempting salad, "for the
sublime thing about Hollanders is that they have created a country for
themselves. If you had ever stood on the town house of Leyden----"

"I have stood there."

"And what did you see?"

"I saw streets, where there was once the open sea. I saw cornfields,
where fish had once been caught. I saw an orchard, where there had
once been an oyster-bed. I saw a fair province, covered with a web of
silvery waters."

"And yet they say that Dutchmen are prosaic and phlegmatic! Holland is
in itself a poem!"

"Yes," said Adriana, "for some poet must have seen beneath the salt
waves the land flowing with milk and bristling with barley."

"And then," added Miss Alida, all aglow with enthusiasm--"and th