e eaves of the
house; the family slept on the floor below. Julia was glad of this,
though it was possible to imagine her room would be very hot in summer
and very cold in winter. But she was glad to be well above the
sleeping house, and to be able to look from her window across the wide
country, over the dark bulb gardens--laid out like a Chinese puzzle
with their eight-foot hedges--to the lights of the town on the one
hand, and, better still, to the dim curve of the Dunes on the other.
It is to be feared she sometimes spent a longer time at her window
than was wise, seeing the early hour at which she had to rise; but no
one was troubled by it, for she was careful to take off her shoes
first thing; the rooms were unceiled, and it was necessary to tread
lightly if one would not disturb people below.

On the day after that of Anna and Denah's visit, Herr Van Heigen
offered to show Julia the bulb barns. It was a Saturday, and so after
dinner, the workmen having all gone home, there was no one about and
she could ascend the steep barn ladders without any suffering in her
modesty. At least that was what Mijnheer thought; Julia, her modesty
being of a very serviceable order, may have given the matter less
consideration, but she accepted the offer.

The barns were very large and high, many of them three storeys and
each storey lofty. The light inside was dim, a sort of dun colour, and
the air very dry and full of a strange, not unpleasant smell.
Everything was as clean as clean could be; no litter, no dirt, the
floor nicely swept, the shelves that ran all round and rose, tier upon
tier, in an enormous stand that occupied the whole centre of the
place, all perfectly orderly. On the shelves the bulbs lay, every one
smooth and clean and dry, sorted according to kind and quality;
Mijnheer knew them all; he could, like a book-lover with his books,
put his hand upon any that he wished in the dark. It seemed to Julia
that there were hundreds upon hundreds of different sorts. Not only
hyacinths and tulips and such well-known ones in endless sizes and
varieties, but little roots with six and seven syllable names she had
never heard before, and big roots, too, and strange cornery roots, a
never-ending quantity.

Mijnheer told her they were not yet all in; many were in the ground
and had still to be lifted. This she knew, for she had seen the dead
tops of some in the little enclosed squares where they grew; from her
bedroom window, t