en them yet. I think we can take you on faith, just as you've taken
our claims to the boat. Your Scotch aunt alone would be a guarantee, if
we needed one. A Scotch aunt sounds so _extra_ reliable. But perhaps my
relatives may be of use in other ways, as they've lived in Rotterdam
always, I fancy. They might even find us a skipper, if your negotiations
fall through. Anyhow, I'll write a letter from our hotel to the head of
the family, introducing myself as his long-lost cousin twice removed."

"What is your hotel, if I may ask?" inquired Mr. Starr.

I told him, and it turned out that it had been his till this very
morning, when he had removed his things to "Lorelei," with the intention
of living on board till he was ready to start. Now he proposed to have
them taken back to the hotel, and rearranged on the barge when his aunt
came. As for that sly old person, the caretaker, our new friend
volunteered to straighten out everything with him, our affair as well
as his own.

"When he discovers that we can't be bothered having the law of him, as
he richly deserves, he will remember his English, or I'll find the way
to make him," said the young man in such a joyous, confident way, that
thereupon I dubbed him our "lucky Starr."

IV

"How funny if I've got relations who can't speak any language except
Dutch!" I said, after I'd sent a letter by messenger to the address of
the Robert van Buren found in the directory.

But half an hour later an answer came back, in English. Mine very
sincerely, Robert van Buren, would give himself the pleasure of calling
on his cousin immediately. When I received this news it was one o'clock,
and we were finishing lunch at the hotel, in the society of Mr. Starr,
who had already wired to his aunt that she was to play the part of
chaperon.

I read the letter aloud, and Phil and I decided that it sounded _old_.

"Mother spoke once or twice of father's cousin, Robert van Buren; so I
suppose he's about the age my father would have been if he'd lived," I
said. "I hope he'll not turn out a horror."

"I hope he'll not forbid you to associate with my aunt and me," cut in
Mr. Starr. "It's a stiff kind of handwriting."

"He can't make me stiff," said I. "Cousins twice removed don't
count--except when they can be useful."

"A gentleman in the reading-room to see you, miss," announced the
waiter, who could speak English, handing me a card on a tray. It was a
foreign-looking card, and I could