ds can
interest himself for you?"

"I have no friends, Rosa; I have only my old nurse, whom you know,
and who knows you. Alas, poor Sue! she would come herself, and use no
roundabout ways. She would at once say to your father, or to you, 'My
good sir, or my good miss, my child is here; see how grieved I am; let
me see him only for one hour, and I'll pray for you as long as I live.'
No, no," continued Cornelius; "with the exception of my poor old Sue, I
have no friends in this world."

"Then I come back to what I thought before; and the more so as last
evening at sunset, whilst I was arranging the border where I am to
plant your bulb, I saw a shadow gliding between the alder trees and the
aspens. I did not appear to see him, but it was this man. He concealed
himself and saw me digging the ground, and certainly it was me whom he
followed, and me whom he was spying after. I could not move my rake, or
touch one atom of soil, without his noticing it."

"Oh, yes, yes, he is in love with you," said Cornelius. "Is he young? Is
he handsome?"

Saying this he looked anxiously at Rosa, eagerly waiting for her answer.

"Young? handsome?" cried Rosa, bursting into a laugh. "He is hideous to
look at; crooked, nearly fifty years of age, and never dares to look me
in the face, or to speak, except in an undertone."

"And his name?"

"Jacob Gisels."

"I don't know him."

"Then you see that, at all events, he does not come after you."

"At any rate, if he loves you, Rosa, which is very likely, as to see you
is to love you, at least you don't love him."

"To be sure I don't."

"Then you wish me to keep my mind easy?"

"I should certainly ask you to do so."

"Well, then, now as you begin to know how to read you will read all
that I write to you of the pangs of jealousy and of absence, won't you,
Rosa?"

"I shall read it, if you write with good big letters."

Then, as the turn which the conversation took began to make Rosa uneasy,
she asked,--

"By the bye, how is your tulip going on?"

"Oh, Rosa, only imagine my joy, this morning I looked at it in the sun,
and after having moved the soil aside which covers the bulb, I saw the
first sprouting of the leaves. This small germ has caused me a much
greater emotion than the order of his Highness which turned aside the
sword already raised at the Buytenhof."

"You hope, then?" said Rosa, smiling.

"Yes, yes, I hope."

"And I, in my turn, when shall I plant my bulb?"

"