hat. The thing of which she did
take account was that they two talked as they walked together, he as
well as she, but both with the ease and quick comprehension of people
who have talked together often.

Mijnheer stopped to look at the merry-go-round; he admired the cheerful
tune that it played. He was not a connoisseur of music; a barrel-organ was
as good to him as the organ in the Groote Kerk. The others stopped too;
Anna exclaimed on the life-like and clever appearance of the bobbing
horses, whereupon her father suggested that perhaps the girls would like
to try a ride on the machine, and then befel the crowning mischief of the
evening. Julia and Anna accepted the proposal readily. Denah declined; she
felt in no humour for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior
mind--one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for
the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness.
But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father
and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing
wooden horse, and Joost--the serious, the sometimes seasick--rode beside
her on a dappled grey, to the familiar old English tune,
"Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-a."

CHAPTER IX

THE HOLIDAY

The Dunes lay some little distance from the town, a low, but
suddenly-rising hill boundary, that shut in the basin of flat land.
They were all of pure sand, though in many places so matted with
vegetation that it was hardly recognisable as such. Trees grew in
places, especially on the side that fronted towards the town; the way
up lay through a dense young wood of beech and larch, and a short,
broad-leafed variety of poplar. There was no undergrowth, but between
the dead leaves one could see that a dark green, short-piled moss had
managed to find a hold here and there, though so smooth was it that it
looked more like old enamel than a natural growth. The trees had the
appearance of high summer, deeply, intensely green, so that they
seemed almost blackish in mass. There was no breeze among them; even
the dapples of sunlight which found their way through the roof of
leaves hardly stirred, but lay in light patches, like scattered gold
upon the ground. Flies and gnats moved and shimmered, a busy life,
whose small voices were the only sound to be heard; all else was very
still, with the glorious reposeful stillness of full summer; not
oppressive, without weariness or exhaustion, r