f Dutch, and when I thought the matter
over I concluded that they were not very appropriate for carrying on a
mild flirtation. Still, it's wonderful how much you can do with facial
expression. Just before the train started a man entered. He knew
English, and with more kindness than knowledge of humanity he offered
to act as interpreter. The ass! as if a fellow can tell a girl through
an interpreter that her hair is just the shade he admires. This fisher
lassie was the only pretty girl I saw in Holland in ten days.

Rotterdam. My first and abiding impression was that never before had I
seen so many badly-dressed people. If I had money and a profiteering
complex I should set up a Bond Street shop in the centre of Rotterdam.
No, that's wrong; that wasn't my first impression at all: my first
impression was of a window filled with cigars at six cents each--one
and a fifth pence. From that moment I loved Holland and the Dutch.
What did it matter if their clothes were badly cut? What did anything
matter? I dived into that shop and bought twenty . . . and ten yards
farther on discovered a shop with fatter and longer cigars at five
cents each. Three days later in the Hague I walked round the cigar
shops for two hours, dying for a smoke, but not daring to buy a cigar
at five cents lest in the next street I should find a shop offering
them at four cents.

It was in Rotterdam that I discovered how bad my manners were. I was
sitting in a cafe when a gentleman entered. He swept off his hat and
bowed graciously . . . and I hastily put a protecting hand on the
pocket containing my pocket-book. But every man who entered greeted me
in the same way, and I realised that I was in a polite country. By the
end of the week I was beating the Dutch at their own game, for I swept
off my hat to every policeman, shopkeeper, tramwayman I spoke to.

On a Monday morning I walked forth to inspect the Dutch schools. I saw
a troop of little girls following a mistress, and I joined the
procession. They turned into a playground, and I followed. I
approached the lady.

"Do you speak English?"

"Engelish! Ja!" she said with a smile.

"I am an English--no, Scots teacher," I explained, "and I should like
to see the school."

"I will ask the head-mistress," she said, and entered the school, while
I stood and admired the bonny white dresses of the girls.

She returned shaking her head.

"The head-mistress says that it is not allowed