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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
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