“No, Gretel,” he answered at last, “I can wait. Someday I may have money enough saved to buy a fine pair. You shall have these.”
Gretel’s eyes sparkled, but in another instant she insisted, rather faintly, “The young lady gave the money to YOU, Hans. I’d be real bad to take it.”
Hans shook his head resolutely as he trudged on, causing his sister to half-skip and half-walk in her effort to keep beside him[45]. By this time they had taken off their wooden “rockers” and were hastening home to tell their mother the good news.
“Oh! I know!” cried Gretel in a sprightly tone. “You can do this. You can get a pair a little too small for you, and too big for me, and we can take turns and use them. Won’t that be fine?” Gretel clapped her hands again.
Poor Hans! This was a strong temptation, but he pushed it away from him, brave-hearted fellow that he was.
“Nonsense, Gretel. You could never get on with a big pair. You stumbled about with these, like a blind chicken, before I curved off the ends. No, you must have a pair to fit exactly, and you must practice every chance you can get, until the twentieth comes. My little Gretel shall win the silver skates.”
Gretel could not help laughing with delight at the very idea.
“Hans! Gretel!” called out a familiar voice.
“Coming, Mother!”
They hastened toward the cottage, Hans still shaking the pieces of silver in his hand.
On the following day there was not a prouder nor a happier boy in all Holland than Hans Brinker as he watched his sister, with many a dexterous sweep, flying in and out among the skaters who at sundown thronged the canal. A warm jacket had been given her by the kindhearted Hilda, and the burst-out shoes had been cobbled into decency[46] by Dame Brinker. As the little creature darted backward and forward, flushed with enjoyment and quite unconscious of the many wondering glances bent upon her, she felt that the shining runners beneath her feet had suddenly turned earth into fairyland while “Hans, dear, good Hans!” echoed itself over and over again in her grateful heart.
“By den donder![47]” exclaimed Peter van Holp to Carl Schummel, “but that little one in the red jacket and patched petticoat skates well. Gunst![48] She has toes on her heels and eyes in the back of her head! See her! It will be a joke if she gets in the race and beats Katrinka Flack, after all.”
“Hush! not so loud!” returned Carl, rather sneeringly. “That little lady in rags is the special pet of Hilda van Gleck. Those shining skates are her gift, if I make no mistake.”
“So! so!” exclaimed Peter with a radiant smile, for Hilda was his best friend. “She has been at her good work there too!” And Mynheer van Holp, after cutting a double figure eight on the ice, to say nothing of a huge P, then a jump and an H, glided onward until he found himself beside Hilda.
Hand in hand, they skated together, laughingly at first, then staidly talking in a low tone.
Strange to say, Peter van Holp soon arrived at a sudden conviction that his little sister needed a wooden chain just like Hilda’s.
Two days afterwards, on Saint Nicholas’s Eve, Hans, having burned three candle ends and cut his thumb into the bargain[49], stood in the marketplace at Amsterdam, buying another pair of skates.
Shadows in the Home
Good Dame Brinker! As soon as the scanty dinner had been cleared away that noon, she had arrayed herself in her holiday attire in honor of Saint Nicholas. It will brighten the children, she thought to herself, and she was not mistaken. This festival dress had been worn very seldom during the past ten years; before that time it had done good service and had flourished at many a dance and kermis, when she was known, far and wide, as the pretty Meitje Klenck. The children had sometimes been granted rare glimpses of it as it lay in state in the old oaken chest. Faded and threadbare as it was, it was gorgeous in their eyes, with its white linen tucker, now gathered to her plump throat and vanishing beneath the trim bodice of blue homespun, and its reddish-brown skirt bordered with black. The knitted woolen mitts and the dainty cap showing her hair, which generally was hidden, made her seem almost like a princess to Gretel, while Master Hans grew staid and well-behaved as he gazed.
Soon the little maid, while braiding her own golden tresses, fairly danced around her mother in an ecstasy of admiration.
“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother, how pretty you are! Look, Hans! Isn’t it just like a picture?”
“Just like a picture,” assented Hans cheerfully. “JUST like a picture – only I don’t like those stocking things on the hands.”
“Not like the mitts, brother Hans! Why, they’re very important. See, they cover up all the red[50]. Oh, Mother, how white your arm is where the mitt leaves off, whiter than mine, oh, ever so much whiter. I declare, Mother, the bodice is tight for you. You’re growing! You’re surely growing!”
Dame Brinker laughed.
“This was made long ago, lovey, when I wasn’t much thicker about the waist than a churn dasher. And how do you like the cap?” she asked, turning her head from side to side.
“Oh, EVER so much, Mother. It’s b-e-a-u-tiful! See, the father is looking!”
Was the father looking? Alas! only with a dull stare. His vrouw[51] turned toward him with a start, something like a blush rising to her cheeks, a questioning sparkle in her eye. The bright look died away in an instant.
“No, no.” She sighed. “He sees nothing. Come, Hans” – and the smile crept faintly back again – “don’t stand gaping at me all day, and the new skates waiting for you at Amsterdam.”
“Ah, Mother,” he answered, “you need so many things. Why should I buy skates?”
“Nonsense, child. The money was given to you on purpose, or the work was – it’s all the same thing. Go while the sun is high.”
“Yes, and hurry back, Hans!” laughed Gretel. “We’ll race on the canal tonight, if the mother lets us.”
At the very threshold he turned to say, “Your spinning wheel wants a new treadle, Mother.”
“You can make it[52], Hans.”
“So I can. That will take no money. But you need feathers and wool and meal, and – ”
“There, there! That will do. Your silver cannot buy everything. Ah! Hans, if our stolen money would but come back on this bright Saint Nicholas’s Eve, how glad we would be! Only last night I prayed to the good saint – ”
“Mother!” interrupted Hans in dismay.
“Why not, Hans? Shame on you to reproach me for that! I’m as true a Protestant, in sooth, as any fine lady that walks into church, but it’s no wrong to turn sometimes to the good Saint Nicholas. Tut! It’s a likely story if one can’t do that, without one’s children flaring up at it – and he the boys’ and girls’ own saint. Hoot! Mayhap the colt is a steadier horse than the mare[53]?”
Hans knew his mother too well to offer a word in opposition when her voice quickened and sharpened as it did now (it was often sharp and quick when she spoke of the missing money), so he said gently, “And what did you ask of good Saint Nicholas, Mother?”
“Why, never to give