Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

anal, and had occasionally been harnessed with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong an

ild, he was yet strong of arm and very hearty, and Dame

Even the Burgomaster would stop to ask him a question, and now alack! he don't know his wife a

thing under the sun-and how he would sing! why, you used t

is eyes may be; and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can't keep 'em covered all I can do--"

went out day after day to gather peat, which they would stow away in square, brick-like pieces, for fuel. At other times, when home-work

t she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the figuring-board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans, on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in study or daily labor, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him out of school, on accoun

aart, of dit endje to

at home because their mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention, and there was black bread

kimming down the canal. There were fine skaters among them, and as the bright medley of costumes flitted by, it loo

t enough to display the gray homespun hose to advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam; and, flocking closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and L

ever at car

skating leisurely toward the town; or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old burgomaster who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was puffing his way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, from their s

nding with their packs; barge-men with shaggy hair and bleared faces, jostling roughly on their way; kind-eyed clergymen speeding perhaps to the bedsides of the dying; and, after a while, groups of childre

ing back the sunlight. We might have known no more of them had not the whole party suddenly come to a standstill and, grouping themselves out o

breath, "have you heard of it?

aughing-"Don't all talk at onc

at Rychie Korbes, who was th

twentieth, on Meurouw[8] van Gleck's birthday. It's all Hilda's w

l pair of silver skates-perfectly magnificent! wi

put in the small voice of

ster Voost,"

d Mynheer van Korbes told my mother they had bells,"-came from sundry of the excited group

single thing about it; they haven

us of conflicting opin

ilda, quietly, "but there is to be another pair f

" cried nearly all the

at them with b

o try?" s

you must, too, Katrinka. But it's school time now, we wi

out a coquettish-"Don't you hear the last bell? Catch me!"-darted

the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming in the s

hine image, ever floating in advance, sped through one boy's dreams that night! What wonder tha

TNO

orth about two ce

idler, or this rope's

ed after German friends. The Dutch fo

adame (pronou