"Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?"
Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles—"my mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"—and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone—"If my money would bring a meester[1] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done."
"A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money; and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates."
Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness.
Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest.
- ↑ Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.
