Part 21

There are glass doors between the garden-room and a drawing-room behind. They were closed, because the Dutch (I am already learning) like to draw a firm dividing line between being in the house and in the open air; and I could see through the glass a half-length, life-size portrait of a humorous little brown gentleman, who was, no doubt, Cousin Cornelia's late husband, and Robert's father. Taking this for granted, it's evident that Robert gets his inches and his blond splendor of looks from his mother. There was so much of Cousin Cornelia in her black and white spotted muslin, that at first I was conscious of her presence alone. It was only her rich voice (like Devonshire cream, all in soft lumps when the English words were difficult) introducing "Freule Menela van der Windt, and your two cousins, Lisbeth and Lilli," which made me aware that others were present.

I turned to the fiancee first, and found her a dark, thin, near-sighted girl, with eye-glasses that pinched her nose, and perhaps her temper as well, for there isn't a line of her face which won't be cross-grained when she is old. She looked hard through her glasses at me and at Phil, taking stock of us both, and didn't offer to shake hands; but Lisbeth and Lilli, adorable strawberry-and-cream girls, twins of fifteen or sixteen, put out dimpled fingers.

Cousin Cornelia asked how we liked Holland, but without waiting for us to answer, told off Lisbeth and Lilli to show us our room, as there was only just time to wash away the dust of motoring.

I was awestruck by Cousin Cornelia, and depressed by Menela; still I hugged the thought that we were in luck to see the inside of a Dutch home, and determined to make the most of our experience, which may not occur again.

I never supposed it possible for the interior of a house to shine as this does. Everything shines, even things that no one expects to present a polished surface. For instance, does anybody (not Dutch) call upon walls to behave as if they were mirrors? Yet as I went up the rather steep stairs of the Villa van Buren I could see each movement I made, each rise and fall of an eyelash repeated on a surface of brilliantly varnished walnut.

"What wonderful wood!" I exclaimed.

"It is not real. It is paint," said pretty Lisbeth. "Do you not have walls like this?"

"Never," I replied.

"Every one does in Holland. We admire them," explained Lilli.

"But what a lot of work to keep them so bright."

"It is only done once a day," she said apologetically. "The servant does it when she has finished the windows."

"What--all the windows in the house--every day?"

"How else would they be clean?" asked Lisbeth, surprised.

There was no answer to this, from a Dutch point of view, so I remarked meekly that it must take all the servant's time.

"It is what they like," said Lilli. "But we have another woman for the floors and beating out the rugs, and doing the brass, so it is not so much."

"Floors and rugs and brass every day, too?"

"Of course," returned both girls together, as if I had asked them about their baths or their tooth-brushes. "Of course."

Lisbeth opened the door of a front room on the second floor.

"This is the spare room," said she, and advanced cautiously through the dusk caused by the closing of the shutters. "We keep them so in the afternoon," she explained, "because of the sunshine."

"Yes, otherwise the room would be hot, I suppose?"

"We do not mind its being hot. It is because the sun would fade the carpet and the curtains." She threw open the blinds as she spoke, but carefully shut both windows again.

"Oh, mayn't we have them open?" I ventured to ask. "The air is lovely."

"If you like," my cousin replied. "Only, if you do, the sand may blow in."

"Just at the top then."

"At the top? I have not seen a window that opens at the top. We do not have them made so."

"How funny! But I suppose there must be a reason why a whole nation should go on having windows that won't open at the top."

"I do not know, except that we have always had them like that, so probably it is better to go on," said Lilli, after a few seconds' reflection, during which she looked exceedingly charming. She and Lisbeth made no attempt at having figures, but their faces are perfect, and their long tails of hair are fair and glossy as the silk of American corn.

When the twins left us to our own devices, I was for simply washing hands and faces; but Phil fiercely tore off her blouse, and made herself pink with the effort of unearthing another from our box.